


The Angle of Repose

by standbyme



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, Historical AU, M/M, supernatural horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-02
Updated: 2013-10-01
Packaged: 2017-12-28 03:31:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 45,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/987152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/standbyme/pseuds/standbyme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>by the year 1972 the state of kentucky had produced over 100 million tons of bituminous coal. when castiel, the new continuous miner operator at the venus coal camp’s no. 6 mine, begins to sense something strange is happening underground, the lines between the possible and the impossible begin to blur, and dean may be the only one who is willing to believe him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> disclaimer: the following is a work of fiction based on the history of coal mining/regional portrait of life in the eastern appalachian region of the united states, and any similarity between real events/people and the ones portrayed here are purely coincidental. for the sake of this fiction, the unionization of coal mining has been slowed and the timeline has been slightly altered (for anyone wondering why certain things were legally allowed in the case of this fic). 
> 
> warnings: mentions of infanticide, postpartum depression, psychiatric health, poverty, single parenthood, consenting adult activity, and light psychological horror/themes
> 
> acknowledgements:  
> lore - for his patience, talent, and understanding this past month! i enjoyed working with him immensely and am so grateful for him.  
> alex - couldn't have done it without you, strong sauce <3

 

The Angle of Repose

 

 

"Give me the islands of the upper air,  
all mountains,  
and the towering mountain trees."

_H.D._

"So at last the King gave orders for Daniel to be thrown into the den of lions.  
The King said to him 'May your God, whom you serve so faithfully, rescue you'."

_Daniel 6:16_

* * *

**Johnson County, KY | 1972**

“It don’t sit right,” Victor said, and Dean took a long pull off of the cigarette pinched between his fingers.

“All this talk – it don’t sit right. Twelve cuts? There ain’t  _nobody_  can pull  _twelve cuts_ ,” Victor kept on, Dean exhaling and watching the blue smoke ribbon up towards the murky sky.

“If Boss says he can, then he can,” Dean remarked with a soft shrug of his shoulders, blowing the remainder of smoke out with his words. “At least he better,” he added, tapping some ash to the dirt and stifling a yawn into the back of his free hand. 

“You know what this is?” Victor demanded, turning to his friend. His dark face was fierce and unsettled and Dean offered him a tired smile.

“First degree murder,” he said, a laugh tinting his voice. He shook his head.  How many times had he heard that? Too many to count.

“You watch,” Victor continued, jabbing his finger at Dean, features deepened by shadows in the dim light of early morning. “You wait and see because I’ve got a bad feeling about this. Hiring some briggity son-of-a-bitch who thinks he can pull twelve cuts in a single shift? There ain’t nothing safe or good about that. That there’s  _hubris._  You know what that is?”

“What’s hubris, Victor,” Dean played along, rolling his neck back and forth with his eyes closed.

“That’s pride, Dean. That there is  _arrogance._  That’s what gets men kilt,” Victor’s hand kept stabbing at the empty air with his words. “Any fool with two eyes can see that. Makes my guts hurt,” Victor growled out, and he began patting the pockets of his coveralls for his cigarettes, pulling one out and lighting it and sucking the end anxiously. “Twelve cuts. Twelve fucking cuts in a shift you ever heard such a tall tale in your  _life -_ ”

“Victor, you’re giving yourself an ulcer,” Dean said abruptly, cutting his friend off and giving him a labored sideways glance. After a moment Victor’s mouth snapped closed and his eyes wrenched away from Dean’s to scowl furiously across the yard. “

“You seen Benny this morning?” Dean asked, breaking the tense quiet. Victor nodded, lifting his cigarette back to his mouth.

“He’s talkin’ some  _business_ ,” Victor said, words calmer and more bemused. “Trying to bleed somebody dry, I’m sure.”

Dean rolled his eyes. It was always something: cards, racing, moonshine. He could only guess what poor soul Benny was trying to gamble out of house and home that particular day.

“Speak of the devil himself,” Victor continued, nodding towards the dirt drive that dipped down over the back of the hill. They were standing at the far edge of a narrow yard positioned in front of the Venus No. 6 mine, a standard procedure for the two of them. There was always time to kill before shift – waiting for Boss to finish inspection, waiting for the mantrip or the belt to be cleared or some detail to be ironed out.

The mine never slept, never quit and all around was the thump and grind and constant whir of machinery.

Farther away, unseen, there was the sound of night shift’s cuts being sorted – good coal from slack rock – as it went tumbling into the hopper cars at the foot of the hill, ready to be trained back to the refineries. It was only a little past six thirty in the morning but the company always swarming like an anthill – night shift buddies were traipsing across the loose red dirt mopping at their faces with handkerchiefs that came away black as pitch.

Others were stopping to have a post-shift smoke, stretching their cramped joints in the growing dawn before they went to the wash house, talking in low voices to each other.

Outside men wove around these little groups, hustling back and forth to ready for day shift – checking generator gauges and giving equipment once overs and getting the final figures on load before the whistle wailed the start of the next wave of work.

Dean gave intermittent nods as they passed and was offered tired smiles or waves in return and other soft admonishments, but soon his attention was focused on the burly figure sauntering up through the hog-back spine of brush on the side of the road leading up to the mine. He went merrily along, tipping his captain’s hat to men  he recognized and truck drivers beginning the trek down the mountain.

“Bonjour!” Benny called loudly across the yard, voice muffled by the constant racket, and Dean raised his hand. There was the tell-tale swagger to Benny’s long step that told everyone he had a fat wallet that morning, or at least one in the making. Behind him, the sun was beginning to curl its fingers over the horizon, gold light banding the mountainsides. Far yonder, as far as Dean could see, Old Man’s Creek wound around the foothills in a thin ribbon of silver.

“Well at least somebody is in a good mood,” Victor said, dropping his spent cigarette to the ground as Dean had earlier, the broad Cajun coming to a stop.

“Well?” Benny huffed lightly, looking expectantly between them. “You see him yet?”

“No,” Victor said cooly and rolled his shoulder, staring around the yard, eyes glancing from face to face, looking for a new one.

“I figure he’s in the office, anyway,” Benny continued and all three men turned their heads to the squat trailer on one side of the lot where the books were kept. “Boss say anything particular about him?” Benny asked, singling Dean out. The younger man nodded and looked up at his friends with the pleasure of someone who knew something others didn’t.

“He laid it out for me last night,” Dean began, luring with his voice. “Said it all came to when Ronald Reznick pert-near lost his mind a few days ago. He barged right in on Adler and all them wailin’ about how the machine wasn’t safe and he wasn’t gonna work on it anymore.”

“Aww,” Benny began, sarcasm lilting his voice. “Kid just didn’t want to get fired. Barely pulled – what? Six cuts?”

Ron was a good man, but his position as operator had been a running joke for the past few months.

Dean nodded solemnly. Victor lit another cigarette.

“That’s what I told boss. I reckon the poor son a bitch just wanted to pull out before they put it down on his record,” he frowned. “They had no business puttin’ him on that miner anyway. I don’t know what they were expectin’.” Dean moved his shoulders, twisting slightly to adjust the back brace under his jacket. “Everybody knew Ron was skittish ‘bout everything after Ricky. Doin’ the dead man’s job ain’t gonna help that.”

There was a respectful silence for Ricky Wade in that moment, the three recalling in too-vivid detail the horrific aftermath of the four-ton slab of shale crushing him into the mine floor. Dean had worked in a mine since he was sixteen years old and he had never seen an accident so bad in his life. Sometimes, when he closed his eyes, he still saw Ricky Wade’s mangled legs as they dragged him out.

 “Well, if he hadn’t done it I would have,” Benny continued. “Six cuts doesn’t cut it with me.”

“Ron’s better than some outsider,” Victor snapped and Benny slung his arm around his shoulders.

“Come on now mon frère, you know that ain’t fair to say. I was an outsider too, once upon a time.”

Victor gave him an unimpressed stare.

“I ain’t crazy about you either,” he said blandly.

Dean laughed along with Benny before shaking his head.

“Just no business putting him on that miner,” he reiterated, bringing them back to the point.

“So?”

Dean reached up and rubbed his forehead tiredly, recollecting the conversation with Boss from the night before.

“Said he doesn’t say much. _Real_  plain spoken when he does. Supposed to be some kind of miracle worker that’s gonna whip us into shape,” Dean answered.

“I heard his people are that Bohemian type, you know, gypsy,” Benny added, like it meant something, and Dean glanced at him.

“I don’t care where he’s from,” Dean said. “If they say he can average ten cuts a shift he better do it.”

“Ten?” Benny marveled. “They said that?”

“I told you,” Dean reminded. “Miracle worker.”

“Hubris,” Victor grunted.

Dean couldn’t blame either of them for their incredulity. He hadn’t believed it either when Bobby had told him, sitting there at the table after Dean had cleared away supper. Karen was in the back of the house getting the baby dressed for bed and Sam had been sent out to the yard to put up the mule for the night, leaving the two alone.

While Dean called him ‘Boss’ the moment he stepped out his front door like every other buddy he had, there in the  house he’d been born and brought up in it was Bobby, the gruff but caring man he’d known all his life. It was surreal sometimes to be the one sitting in his father’s chair with Bobby sitting in his usual one, the two talking the job and everything else the way John had done before he died.

“Coffee?” Dean had asked.

“Don’t care,” Bobby had replied, all worn in formalities, giving a soft thank you when Dean poured more into his mug.

They drank quietly and then Bobby pulled his old cap off his head, rubbing it and then replacing it.

“Dean, I’m a good worker. Used to pull and stable Jennies with your pa when we were barely thirteen years old. Back then they used log posts and dynamite; weren’t anything like what you fellas work with. Thirteen years old,” he repeated, and Dean lowered his chin in respect. “That’s when I stepped into that hole for the first time and I haven’t been out since. You know I’ve seen every kind of man there can be go down in them mines. Watched my daddy and your pap break their backs hauling loads, hell, watched my own daddy get kilt, and I’m telling you, I ain’t ever seen such trouble like I have these past six months. You’d think ever body had gone and lost all the good sense God might have given em’.”

“Ron?” Dean had asked and Bobby pulled the bill of his cap more securely over his forehead.

“Came in Tuesday night lookin’ like he’d seen the devil himself. Said somethin’ about the machine – that it doesn’t mind him. Got a mind all its own. So, I had Ash look at the damn thing and he can’t come up with anything, and I looked at it myself and of course came up with nothing. Far as I can tell, something just spooked him, but you know how he is.”

“He just didn’t want the humiliation,” Dean affirmed and the two men nodded. “What are they going to do about it?”

Bobby gave Dean a sideways glance.

“That’s the other thing,” he began, and Dean’s eyes narrowed. “You know as well as I do that Ron shouldn’t have been on that miner at all. He’s too damn nervous. Boy kicked that generator so many times I nearly beat him over the head with the control box. Well, for a while the night shift been carrying for us and playin’ catch up, but apparently that don’t suit Adler anymore. He wants ten cuts per shift per crew, period.”

“ _Ten_?” Dean blurted. “Is he smoking his shoes? We barely push seven on a good day - what put that idea in his head?”

“All this union talk has him bugged and he wants to push as hard as he can before they bring the fist of God on him. Least, that’s all I can speculate.” Bobby paused to take a sip of his coffee. “It’s changing, Dean. I thought it was over in my day. They introduced all the machinery and I figured it’d be the end of it. We’d adjust and keep on, but,” he trailed off and Dean looked past him, at the floor.

“This old way of doin’ things ain’t gonna be round much longer,” Bobby finished and Dean’s stomach clenched. “You young fellas ain’t the same breed. You’re quicker than we were and you don’t treat the job the same – how could you? You’ve got all the equipment we never had.  Used to be a man could just depend on another man, but now we don’t depend so much on the man as the machine he’s workin’, and it don’t take much to learn how to work those machines. It just ain’t the same.”

Dean kept staring at the floor, mulling the words over. He knew Bobby well enough to know he wasn’t being critical in a personal way. Dean knew he wasn’t like his father, that he’d never know what it was like to wedge the old four by fours up against the ceiling and pray they’d hold, but it had also been John who’d taught him how to work the bolt machine. It was John who had taught him how fast to turn the pin so your arm wouldn’t get torn off and how long to let the glue set before backing it out.

But it was Dean who knew how to  _think_  with the bolter. He knew how to feel the pin, knew what bad top felt like without even looking, could tell the difference between shale, slate, and seam within seconds. It was Dean who had turned it into a profession, and he knew that was something his father’s generation couldn’t understand completely.

His father had always said he was a miner, but Dean, when asked, always knew he was a bolt man.

“So this new guy,” Dean said, the light hanging above the kitchen table becoming more pronounced as the sun set. He lit a cigarette and Bobby sighed, and they both listened to the soft off-key hum of Karen singing Emma to sleep in the back of the house.

“His name is Novak. Can’t remember his first name for the life of me - somethin’ foreign. Don’t know too much about him. Don’t even know where they found him – but with all these strikes lots of people been drifting. I’ve been askin’ around and it seems like he’s the best operator in Kentucky.”

“Oh, I’m sure,” Dean laughed, blowing smoke out of his nose. Bobby laughed too, leaning back in the kitchen chair.

“I won’t meet him till you and the rest do tomorrow morning, but he sounds like a real briggity son of a bitch. At least he’s got reason to be. They said he pulled twelve cuts one shift doin’ overtime and he averages a little over ten. That’s why Adler wanted him somethin’ fierce.”

Dean refused to believe it. Even if someone was good, twelve was ungodly – he didn’t even know if he could keep up with someone who made twelve cuts.

“How’s he on clearance?” Dean asked, and Bobby moved another chair out and put his feet up on it with a low groan.

“Didn’t ask.”

“Probably shit then,” Dean grunted.

“They made him out like some kind of magician. Said he can  _hear_  the coal and that’s how he can follow the seam so close. Never kicks it either.”

“Mhmm,” Dean hummed. “So this big shot comes in and he gets carried away. Then what?”

“Ride it out,” was all Bobby could say. “Pray he’s just there to do his job and that nothing else comes of it. This mine has had more than enough of its share of bad luck. We could use a few miracle workers if you ask me.”

Dean couldn’t argue with that. Ricky Wade’s death had rattled all their cages; sudden and violent and strange. It had been wrapped up in so much specific circumstance it almost seemed unreal. He was standing in the wrong place at exactly the wrong time, but there he was, crushed to death – a mangled bloody mess of the man he used to be.

Dean shook the image away.

“Well I’ll believe it when I see it,” Dean had ended up saying, taking a sip of his coffee that was quickly going cold.

“You’re only twenty three boy,” Bobby had drawled. “You got plenty of things more interesting to see than some hot-to-trot miner operator. Quit worrying so goddamn much and wasting these young years.”

They’d said their goodbyes soon after. Dean had thanked Karen and she had smiled at him the way she always did and told him it was nothing.

“Guess we’re about to find out,” Benny said as the story came to a close, and the reason became apparent. There was the squeal of breaks as Bobby came out of the mine on the mantrip, hauling himself up from the low driver’s seat. He was already dark with coal dust just from the short inspection trip, and he glanced at the trio and motioned for them to follow him as he made his way to the middle of the yard.

“Gather up!” he yelled, and Dean and Victor and Benny were soon joined by the rest of their crew in a small loose semi-circle around the foreman. Bobby looked around their faces and nodded to himself. There they all were, standing like disciples from Ash down to Ralph, their imposing electrician with the board-stiff posture.

“Now I know you’ve all heard everything there is to say about this,” Bobby started, pushing his jacket away from his waist to rest his fingers under his tool belt as he usually did when he was getting started on a lecture. “I know the sort of things you fellas get up to sayin’ about each other, let alone a new man and one hired so sudden.”

Victor moved a little beside Dean.

“I don’t need to tell you what this business is about,” Bobby went on, looking purposefully at them. “I can’t say nothing about what you do when you step out of this yard, but I’m going to set it straight right now: there will be no problems in my mine. You will do your job and you will expect every other man here to do his job, and if he don’t do his job then I will see to it that he is reminded. We will work, and we will keep in that coal. You want to bitch? Do it on your time. Is that clear?”

The men sounded their approval in a dull murmur that circulated around the group and Bobby nodded, grunting.

“Right,” he trailed and there was the soft sound of footsteps crossing the sandy ground and Dean shifted his eyes with the rest of them.

The footsteps halted and Dean’s gaze narrowed on the slim man who had made them.

“Come here boy,” Bobby said loudly and the man did as he was told, going to stand beside Bobby. He adjusted his lunch box under his arm and stared back at them with just as much scrutiny, appraising them as much as they were appraising him.

“This here is Castiel Novak, our new operator. He’s here to replace Ronnie. He’s a good worker and he’s going to help us make our poor man’s dollar – ain’t you son?”

Castiel Novak kept his eyes trained on the men before him.

“Yes,” he said after a long moment, his voice deep and morning-rough.

Dean took in as much as he could in the waxy morning light, before they were all hustled underground and it would be harder to make something of the figure standing before them.

This was the so-called miracle worker: a mostly ordinary man in a worn-out dark blue Dickies work set and a beaten denim barn jacket. Dean could see the threads on the quilted interior lining were starting to come apart, and his boots were shabby and obviously hand-me-down from some father or older brother. Still, he wasn’t quite the usual breed, not really. There was nothing particular about him, nothing Dean could name specifically, but he was clearly  _different_. His face was strongly European, but in what seemed to be a general way, with a square jaw and sharp cheekbones and unruly dark hair sticking out under his helmet (one that seemed a little too big and fell a little far over his stern brow) and an expression that did not betray much of what he might have been thinking of the men before him or the situation at hand. Maybe it was his eyes that were so unsettling, such a strong and emotional blue peering out from his otherwise impassive face.

The moment snapped back into reality and Dean realized that Bobby was gesturing for him to come closer and the other men were dispersing, most off to ride the belt into the shaft or load up on the mantrip parked in front of the entrance.

“Yeah Boss?” Dean asked as he stepped closer, keeping a polite distance between him and Castiel Novak. He looked over Bobby’s shoulder at Benny and Victor crossing the yard, his friends giving him questioning stares before making their ways into the mine.

Beside him, Castiel Novak was eyeing him warily but attempting to not be auspicious about it, letting his gaze wander around the yard every so often.

Dean made sure to match his stare when he could.

“Just get him down there in one piece. Show him the equipment, and make sure nobody starts any shit,” Bobby said quietly, ducking his head towards Dean.

“Why me?” Dean whispered, moving his body to at least provide the guise of tact to the new operator. Dean saw that the very tips of the man’s thin fingers were curling and uncurling slightly where they hung at his side.

“Because if they see you gettin’ along with him the rest will follow,” Bobby replied shortly and Dean huffed out of his nose, looking around.  “Also because you have to be behind him from now on, so you  _might_ could use this opportunity to get it done your way.”

Dean bit back a grumble. Bobby had a point, as much as Dean hated to admit it.

The foreman clapped him once on the shoulder and turned to Castiel Novak.

“See you underground – oh, shit, almost forgot, the board’s over there. Dean’ll show you. Did they give you your number?”

Castiel Novak held out the dull metal tag with the punched letters and Bobby nodded, looking back at Dean.

“See you boys in a minute then,” he repeated and Dean scowled briefly, grunting.

Just like that, Dean realized the yard was empty. Not even Garth was wandering back and forth to relieve some of the tension; just Castiel Novak standing stiffly a step away. Dean mentally shook himself out and turned to start walking to the little board just outside the mine opening that displayed row after row of the same tags all with their numbers – many had been moved from the top rows to the bottom, signaling that the miners they belonged to were underground for their shift.

He heard Castiel Novak’s old boots pick up behind him, matching his pace easily. Without speaking he found his tag and moved it on the board, stepping back and waiting for Castiel to do the same.

“Do that every time, obviously. Last mantrip usually leaves about seven, so get there before if you want to take it,” Dean said, chancing to look at the silent new man and Castiel Novak didn’t say anything or do anything, but his eyes flashed.

“They show you everything out here?” Dean continued and instead of responding Castiel Novak’s hand shot out and hung in the air between them.

“Castiel Novak,” he said in that same dark gritty voice and Dean stared at his hand and then reached out his own, shaking it.

“Dean Winchester,” Dean nodded, fingers squeezed in the other man’s cool grip. Their hands fell back to their sides and Dean licked his lip.

“How’d you say your name?” he asked.

“Castiel Novak,” Castiel Novak repeated, stressing the syllables differently than how Bobby had. “It’s Hungarian,” he explained and Dean nodded.

“Right.”

“You can call me Novak if you’d like. Everyone did at the other mine,” he continued and Dean just nodded again, giving him another once over.

“We’ll think of something,” he said gruffly, starting the walk back down to the mantrip the crew had left for them. “You can take the belt too. Not all mines let you do that, but they usually don’t give too much of a damn here long as you show up, so if you’re late you have an in,” he said over his shoulder, gesturing towards the heavy thick band shooting into a large window in the mountainside. It emerged on the other end carrying coal into a spindle-legged structure built over the railroad tracks down below the hill called the tipple.

“Generators are up there on that slope,” Dean pointed out, putting his boot up on the mantrip and readying himself to get into the driver’s side, and Castiel nodded, following the line of his finger. “That back there is the locker room and wash house, and down that hill is the pay office and the company store and housing – you’ve already seen the offices….”

“Do you live there? In Birdsfoot,” Castiel interrupted, referring to the town where the camp was situated.

“No,” Dean said quickly. “I don’t – now today is Friday so for most of us that means payday, but I’m sure your check is on hold till next week…”  
  
“Where do you live?” Castiel cut him off, obviously uninterested in the talk. “Back in the hills?”

Dean gave him a blank stare before speaking.

“I live about three miles away in Elbow Holler. You ever heard of it?”

Castiel shook his head. “Didn’t think so,” Dean rumbled in response, irritated.

Castiel looked closely at him and his mouth opened as if he were about to ask another question and Dean hardened his eyes.

“Do you know what I do?” he said abruptly, voice louder than before, and Castiel’s lips pressed tightly together.

Dean didn’t wait for him to answer.

“I work the bolter. That means I’m responsible for every poor s.ob. in that shaft, including you. My job is to make sure none of that top comes down on anybody in that mine. If it does, it’s on me. So I’m not here to get to know you – I’m here to make sure you get into that coal and you do your job so I can do mine so we can all go home and get our checks at the end of the day. All I care about is being sure that you are going to do your job right and give me enough clearance when you’re behind that miner. That’s it. Because if you don’t, and I can’t do my job, that’s on me. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” Castiel said, voice cold, eyes flashing. “And I know why I’m here,” he added flatly after Dean had turned his back on him to position himself behind the wheel of the low cart. “Someone didn’t do their job.”

 Dean’s blood froze.

He remembered Ricky Wade’s mangled legs –

 “You just worry about making those ten cuts, and I’ll worry about the rest,” Dean said, and he keyed the ignition, drowning out whatever else there was to say.

\--

Dean parked the mantrip with the others and slowly extracted himself and his lunchbox from it, the bright beam from his helmet lighting up only a little ways in front of him. The shaft hummed with the low electric whoosh of the fans being turned, rustling the plastic sheeting partitioning off the long columns where the miner had already ground out rooms into the rock. There was the dull murmur of people talking and the clanks and rumbles of other pieces of equipment already being put to use.

It was a chill, constant 45 degrees in the mine – a welcome from the humid summer air outside.

“Through here,” Dean said, listening to Castiel come around beside him, both of them crouched over because of the low ceiling. Dean didn’t need to be trite anymore, not with work to be done.

The minute the sun disappeared behind them it was all professional.

On the way through the main shaft  Dean dumped his lunch in a corner with the ones he knew belonged to Benny and Victor. He looked at the other miner’s face when he tried to do the same. “You might want to keep yours with you,” he said and Castiel’s eyes flickered in the darkness and his grip tightened on the handle of the old-fashioned bucket he held. His face was clean, but soon enough it’d be as sooty as the other’s.

 They duck-walked the rest of the way through several more curtains, feeling along for balance, and Dean stopped again right before the face itself, looking at the bolt machine parked in front of it. He whistled and there was a jostle of activity and a young face appeared from around the side of it.

“Milligan did you move them glue boxes?” he said loudly, cursing when the scoop rattled to life behind them, clearing the floor.

“What!” the face yelled over the roar and Dean shook his head.

“Can’t fuckin’ hear myself think,” he grouched. “ _Did you move them glue boxes!”_  he said louder and Adam gave him a thumbs down. “ _You better move then!_ ”

 Dean shook his head, watching in the dim and dusty light as Adam got up from where he was sitting, crawling to where a service cart was stacked with long flat cardboard boxes of apoxy for the pins. He liked his cousin as much as anyone liked their kin, but having him as his less-than-enthusiastic assistant was driving him up the wall.

He couldn’t wait till next spring, when he could really start coaching Sam; he only hoped his brother had the knack for it that he had.

Continuing on through the partition the ceiling opened up a little, the cavern lit by a hanging fluorescent lamp nailed loosely to the wall. The faint yellow light cast itself down on the dug-out stretch of rock and looming half in shadow was the grungy orange tail of the continuous miner. 

Weighing in at three tons, the miner was a leviathan. In the further darkness its tungsten carbide coated drum head gleamed, the front hydraulics drooling oil. Tamed, the beast could scrape out five tons of coal a minute. From there the coal was shoveled up into the low flat cart of the scoop, and shuttled to the conveyer belt and out of the mine where it was cleaned and sorted for transport. The miner itself moved up in the mine as it went, creeping its hulking body on thick treads, gouging twenty foot long ‘rooms’ in the coalbed to form a center ‘pillar’ or forty square foot column of rock – extra support for the mountain and the men inside.

Dean bent and picked up the heavy metal control box and held it out to the waiting operator. Castiel took it from him and looked over the machine, craning his head to look around it.

“Has this machine been serviced?”

“Boss checks the oil and gets full report from the night shift and company gets the warranty from Cat.”

Castiel nodded and without another word pressed the switch on, the corner light on the box going red. He tested a lever, watching the hydraulics hiss and lift the head up and down. He tested every control, face blank except for minor twitches of his brows under the line of his helmet while he observed with a clinical sort of regard.

Dean chanced to look at his hands on the box; they were already becoming black-smudged with only a few movements. Castiel Novak sank slowly to his knees on the mine floor beside the massive machine, settling the box on his thigh and tilted slightly up, and Dean watched his dark lashes fall to his cheek as he closed his eyes and pitched the miner forward with a scream of gears. Castiel tilted his head slightly to the side, towards the face, and there was an initial grind of the head through rock – layers of shale and slate - and then a softer sound of him striking the seam, hooking the great teeth into the coal.

Dean was stunned. He had never heard someone break into the rock that fast or that accurately.

“ _In the coal_!” he yelled, remembering himself, and cupping his hands round his mouth. There was a yelled back response as the scoop kicked on again and the echo of boot steps, the real work starting.

The acidic smell of hot metal pricked in Dean’s nose, sharp and pointed as a needle, and giving him the start of a good headache.

\--

There was little sense of time inside the mountain; just the cool darkness and the endless rhythmic pulse of all the machinery. It acted a lot like clockwork, but there was no way to tell how many minutes or hours had gone by or how long you had been at it until you were told. Dean didn’t mind so much so long as there wasn’t a lull; keeping busy was the best antidote against the dulling hypnosis of sound and lack of good light.

He was only thankful that he had his break starting soon. There was always a sense of detachment at the end of the work week before his four days off that made him feel like he was only half a person.

They were taking lunch.  Bobby was complaining over the radio to someone above ground about something and Benny and Victor and Dean crouched in the corner, leaning against the wall while they ate. 

“I’ll give it to him,” Benny started around a forkful of some spicy smelling rice concoction. “He’s living up to that reputation.”

Dean shook his head, taking a bite of his sandwich and chewing it in a sort of stupor and Victor said nothing. From the moment Castiel had hit the seam the entire crew had been fighting to keep up with him, and Dean was no exception. He hated to admit that he was eating his words, but there was an undeniable bitterness in his mouth as he hounded Adam to get the pins ready every time Castiel had finished a cut. Dean assumed that the operator was taking his lunch by himself – the coal had stopped rolling in and there was no tell-tale growl of the miner.

“You think he’ll make ten?” Benny asked and Dean turned to him, lamp light from his helmet settling on Benny’s scruffy face.

“Oh, he’ll make it,” he said, shoving his sandwich back in his mouth.

“I just wonder how much that’s going to cost us,” Victor said sagely and Dean sniffed, wiping his nose, succeeding in getting even more black across his face.

“I don’t know,” Dean said. “I ain’t goin’ out of my way. He’ll blow out of here in a few weeks, you just watch.  He’ll start asking for more money and they’ll shut him down.” Dean didn’t know what to do about Castiel yet; his instincts told him to let it be. He seemed to be nothing more than a drifter and Dean didn’t have time to waste on someone who would be gone in a week or so. Not when he had a job to do and a family to look after.

“You’re probably right,” Benny agreed, stretching a little in place. “In the meantime he’s killin’ my back.”

This elicited a chuckle from his companions and Dean finished his lunch, rubbing lightly at his hands to get the crumbs off and wiping at his mouth with his dirty handkerchief, staring into space.

“You got somethin’ on your mind, Winchester?” Victor asked and Dean blinked till his head cleared, his mouth falling into a frown.

“You know what Sam did this morning?” he said, reaching up to scratch under his helmet. “That boy asked to take my truck to Carraway today.”

Dean nearly marveled at the sentence as he said it.

His little brother had been acting odd for the past few weeks, but not enough to leave good evidence. Truthfully, it wasn’t the first time Sam had asked to take the truck to Carraway, but lately he’d been doing it more and more with one excuse or another. His mind wandered back to that morning and he rubbed his hand on his thigh.

Usually it was a world war to get Sam out of bed, but for a while he’d been getting up on his own without complaint. Dean hardly had to say anything anymore, just had to tell him when his breakfast was on. Dean wanted to blame it on Sam gearing up for the coming months, but he knew Sam better than that; his little brother was up to something, but it wasn’t because of coal mining.  

 “I’m already up,” Sam’d said loud enough for Dean to hear after he’d rapped on his door.

“Hurry 'fore your food get cold,” Dean had replied, rolling his eyes when Sam made some muffled noise to show he understood.  He’d stepped away from Sam’s room and gone back to the kitchen, floorboards creaking under his boots as he went. The radio was on and the newscaster was saying something in an even voice as he sat down at the table, glancing at Sam’s empty seat across from him and the steaming plate in front of it.

Shaking his head, Dean picked up his fork and cut one of the biscuits in half, smearing it through extra gravy before bringing it to his mouth. He chewed, that one lazy eyelid of his drooping a little, and turned towards the toddler at his elbow. She was seated in her high chair, feet swinging and kicking against the legs, the fingers of one hand stuck in her mouth and the others fiddling with the cork on her little dish.

“Emma Lou,  _what_  are you doing?” Dean said sternly and she’d lifted her warm brown eyes to him, fingers dropping from her mouth. He raised his eyebrows and her face melted into a smile, hand held out to him to take. He smiled back and reached forward to pull the spoon off of her tray and put it into her little palm, watching in delight when she fisted the handle.

“You eat them grits,” he directed and she dipped the spoon into her bowl and brought it messily to her mouth. Dean pinched her fat little leg and she giggled around the spoon, pushing it back into her porridge and stirring it around. “Emma Lou Winchester, I said eat it not play,” he scolded lightly, and she did as she was told. “Good girl,” Dean said sweetly, tickling her little foot and going back to his own food, his daughter smacking happily away, legs still swinging.

There was the thump of Sam’s door closing and his footsteps jogging into the kitchen. He eyed the table and then went to the icebox, fishing around for the carton of milk and bringing it back to the table with him.

“I already fixed you coffee,” Dean said, chewing, looking at his little brother with confusion.

“You never put enough milk innit,” Sam drawled, sitting down and mending it to his liking. Dean huffed and took another bite, wiping his mouth with his napkin between. He watched his brother carefully, but there was no real sign that anything unusual was up.

“You oughta learn how to drink it black,” Dean said offhandedly and Sam scowled. “Some days you don’t have time to dress it up the way you like.”

“Yeah, I oughta,” he grouched. “Everybody knows you just dump sugar at the bottom so it  _looks_  black.”

“What people don’t know won’t kill em’,” Dean smiled, taking a smug bite while Sam rolled his eyes so hard Dean figured they’d roll right across the floor.

“You need to go down and see how that corn is,” Dean rambled after a while, looking back to his plate, voice less playful than it had been. A gnat buzzed against the little dome of the light hanging above the eating table and there was a yowl from the garden as the cat rustled in the grass around the corn crib. “And today’s payday so be there to pick up my cut with the sled so I can have hot water, alright? Last time I was waitin’ around for nearly half an hour,” Dean continued, and Sam nodded, brushing his shaggy hair out of his face with one hand. They lapsed into comfortable silence for a few minutes, save for the drum of Emma’s feet and the scrape of their forks against their plates and the soft sounds of them picking up their coffee and setting it down again.

Dean had lost himself in thought when Sam spoke again, suddenly, wriggling his fork into a stubborn part of his breakfast.

“Can I borrow the truck today?”

Dean’s eyes snapped up over the edge of his mug.

“What you need the truck for?” he said slowly, bringing it away from his mouth.

Sam shrugged again, still sawing at his food with his fork, eyes concentrated.

“I busted the hoe on a rock and I need to go to Carraway to get a new one.”

“Sammy,” Dean said, exasperated. “How the hell did you bust it? We’ve had that thing for ten odd years and I’ve never busted it on a rock in my life,” he continued. “Why can’t you just borrow someone else’s anyway...goin’ all the way to Carraway. What’s a kid like you need to go all the way to Carraway for…” he trailed, putting his fork on his plate and standing up from the table, appetite gone.

“Well, what if I bust that one too,” Sam said shortly, and Dean felt his eyes on him as he got up to go to the sink.  
   
“And I ain’t a kid. I’m seventeen. Sides, you said it yourself, Dean, we’ve had it for ten years so why not just get a new one. I’ll even pay for it. So can I?” He gave Dean’s back a pleading gaze. “It’ll only take a little bit. If I leave right after Karen gets here I can be back ‘fore you can even blink– and I promise nothin’ will happen and I’ll put it back right where I found it. I’ll even put gas in the tank. Just to Carraway and back I swear.”

“You’re mighty eager just to get a damn garden hoe,” Dean said over his shoulder, scraping the food off of his plate and into the sink.

“Ho, ho, ho,” Emma said from her chair, and Sam laughed at her. “Ho, ho, ho!” she repeated and Sam poked her on the forehead.

“Not Christmas, you chicken,” he told her and she giggled.

“Cheep cheep, cheep cheep,” she said, going back to her bowl.

“You’re up to something and don’t think I don’t know it,” Dean said loudly.

“Am not,” Sam said, scooping another mouthful of food onto his fork and trying to ignore how his face was getting a little warm. It always did that when he lied and he was grateful Dean wasn’t looking directly at him.

Dean sighed, setting his plate down in the sink with a loud rattle.

“What’s wrong with you anyway?” Sam said, trying not to be too obvious by switching the subject and swallowing a piece of bacon. “You ain’t actin’ so nice yourself.”

“Nothing is wrong,” Dean grumbled. “You’re just awful eager to take that truck out.”

“That ain’t it. You were actin’ strange all last night too, talkin’ with Bobby,” Sam continued, pushing his hair out of his face again. Dean ran the water a little and added enough soap to get the suds going. He turned away from the sink to the counter where his lunch box sat, its rusted red top pushed back to expose the inside.

Dean rubbed his face for a moment and began rifling through the cupboards, throwing things into his lunch haphazardly, ignoring Sam.

Sam watched him do this and set his hands on the table top.

“Dean?” he said seriously, and Dean grunted, adding the rest of the coffee in the pot to a slender blue metal thermos.

“It’s nothing Sammy,” Dean reassured him, screwing the cap back onto the thermos. “Just things on my mind.”

“Must be an awful lot seeing as you were pacing the yard for twenty minutes before you came in,” Sam observed, referring to Dean’s intermission after feeding the mule.

Dean gave him a look from across the room, only distracted when Emma began to fuss and compelled him to walk to her chair and lift her out, settling her on his hip while he finished putting his lunch together.

“You’re too damn nosy,” he said, closing his lunchbox lid. “And I was not  _pacing._  I was thinking. Anyway, it’s not going to be a problem. Everyone is going to do their job like always.” He knew he’d sounded curt at the end – he was convincing himself as much as Sam.

He picked up his lunchbox and walked over to the kitchen table, hovering near the high chair, and Emma whined, leaning her heavy tired head on his shoulder.

 “You be my good girl, alright? Don’t give Karen any fuss,” he said, and kissed her on her warm cheek. She smiled her toothy baby smile at him, sticky hands coming up to touch his face. He kissed her little hand and her cheek and her mouth and the fine soft hair she had across her forehead with reverence. “You’re my pride, baby girl,” he sang and she cooed. It was getting harder to stop every time he held at her. It was the slightest hesitance to put her down again, the barest trace of reluctance to step away from her in case he forgot some important detail; incase he didn’t get the chance to see some small and priceless part of her again or know exactly how she felt in his arms.

“What about the truck?” Sam said and Dean bent to try and put Emma back in the chair but she kicked her legs and grabbed his sleeves with a cry. Dean sighed and held her against him again, giving Sam a wearied stare.

“Come take this baby offa’ me ‘fore I’m late,” he said and Sam got up, walking around to collect her, his big hands out and a smile on. Emma whined but reached for him, leaning into his arms and Sam groaned at her weight. Dean looked long and hard at the two of them and lifted his finger to jab Sam on the forehead and get his attention.

“Carraway and back. If I hear you stopping off by the river or pickin’ anybody up I’ll skin you, you understand me?”

Sam’s face shone with excitement.

“Thank you!” he exclaimed, suddenly throwing his arm around Dean’s middle, the other still holding the baby. “I’ll be so careful with it, I swear Dean –,” Sam rushed and Dean patted his back while Emma looked between them, fingers back in her mouth.

“Alright, alright,” he laughed, prying lose from Sam’s grip, being careful to mind his baby and see that Sam’s head didn’t go slamming against his own. “Oh,” he remembered, touching Sam’s shoulder. “Tell Karen that her check’s in my bedside table drawer, alright?”

“Course,” Sam replied, looking up into his eyes and smiling crookedly. Dean brought his hand up to muss his long hair. “And get a damn trim while you’re there, would you? You can take the rag money,” he chastised

“Jerk,” Sam grumbled, punching Dean lightly in the arm and wriggling away, back to the table and to his food, settling the baby on his lap. Dean nodded and let his eyes wander from Sam to Emma – he caught the baby’s eye and lifted his hand to his mouth, blowing her a kiss. She did the same, smacking her palm against her lips and then thrusting it back to him with a laugh. He caught the kiss in his fist and put it right over his heart, patting the place.

“I’ll be home by six I hope,” Dean mentioned, heading towards the door and eyeing his watch.

“Keep in that coal,” Sam called and Dean nodded to himself. “And don’t forget your braces!” he added.

“Today I got the back one on,” he replied, suddenly aware of the stiff belt around his middle and under his jacket. Sam made a sound of approval and Dean heard his chair scrape as he got up to turn the radio back up. 

Dean  paused for a moment to tuck his wallet and his keys into his pocket and adjust his jacket before continuing out onto the porch. The little amber cat was grooming herself on the steps and she looked up at him with her soft golden eyes before resuming the delicate task of washing her face with a dainty paw , bathing after morning meal.

She stretched when Dean passed her and slunk out after him to the front fence line, rubbing herself up on the posts and twining between them before sitting back on her haunches and watching him leave.

Dean only looked back once that morning, he remembered.

“I’d rather walk on my lips than say I don’t trust that kid, but he’s up to somethin’,” Dean continued in the present. “I just don’t know why he can’t just tell me.”

“He’s at that age. You were there too not so long ago yourself,” Victor chuckled, knocking Dean with his elbow. Dean rolled his eyes and knocked back.

“I’m twenty three. That’s hardly seventeen,” he grumbled and Victor laughed a little harder, Benny joining in.

“You youngins,” Victor teased, earning a punch on the arm, which only served to make him laugh louder.

 

 

* * *

 

Sam loved the doctor’s house in Carraway.

It was an old Victorian with white trim and shutters and a huge covered porch and a long driveway you could park two cars in side by side: one for the doctor and one for the doctor’s wife. The doctor’s wife drove a cream-colored Cadillac with leather seats and a tortoise-trimmed dashboard and chrome hubcaps; it was the same color as the woman’s handbag, Sam had noticed.  It was the same soft off-white that made him think of frosting and the smell of vanilla and whipped cream and he thought that if he ever made something of himself and had a wife he would buy her a handbag just like that, and a little satin wallet to go inside with mother-of-pearl inlay on the clasps.

He wondered, when he saw it, if Mrs. Dr. Moore’s purse had come from some faraway place like Paris or New York. In truth, the bag had been purchased in Cincinnati, but Sam didn’t know that. It was more fun to think that it had come from someplace special, anyway.

The old truck door squealed as he opened it and got out, walking around to the bed and bringing the hatch down so he could climb up and untie the push mower and the other equipment he had brought along, including the garden hoe that was a lot more intact than Dean believed it was.  

He’d lied to Dean, but he knew Dean would never have let him do what he was doing if he’d told him. There was no way to put it to his older brother. Not with Dean so dead-set on Sam taking up a red hat the minute he turned eighteen.

 _“You’ll red hat under me, so it won’t be so bad, and then after a few months you’ll be certified and can start bein’ my miner helper and I can finally shake Adam off on Benny…_ ” Dean would say and Sam would nod along, but it was getting harder and harder to be excited about it. Once it had thrilled him to think he would be just like Dean, to go underground and work with all the big interesting equipment, but after their father had died something about Sam’s attitude had changed.

All of a sudden Sam realized how alone they were. He only had Dean, really. The mine had taken all of their other relatives: uncles, grandfathers, great-grandfathers, and one day, one way or another, as much as it broke Sam’s heart, it would take Dean.

The thought that his brother could one day come home in a box terrified him. He hated it. He hated how selfish it turned him, how unlike himself it made him because he should have been supportive, should have been chomping at the bit like every other boy his age to be like their daddy or older brother, but he just couldn’t.

He hated that Dean got up every morning and left for a job that could kill him and steal him away from Sam. It didn’t make sense that someone so good and so smart could put on a pair of overalls day in and day out and be shuttled far away from the light and the people he loved for hours and hours, breathing in coal dust and God knew what else, but Dean did it the same way their father had. Dean did it with a tired smile and their daddy’s back brace, taming innumerable risk into an occupation.

He didn’t know fear, and he didn’t question.

A coal miner couldn’t afford to do that. Not when coal mining was the only thing between you and starving. There wasn’t anything else to do in Johnson county except run moonshine, or leave, and Sam knew he couldn’t do that either.

So Sam did the thing he always did to comfort himself: he read. Even if he didn’t have a choice, he could at least know everything about what he was going into. Make sure it didn’t have any other legs up on him.

So he read books and articles in magazines and newspapers; he learned statistics and numbers and facts and figures and all it told him was what he already knew: black lung, emphysema, a slab of rock the size of a truck coming down on him, a mechanical accident, the list went on and on.

Going underground was signing his life away.

It was during one of these spells that he came across the little ad, all creased and gone soft as velvet in his shirt pocket, the one he unfolded every night before going to sleep and every morning when he woke up.

It was the little ad that had him sneaking out to Carraway and thinking about handbags when he should have been thinking about coal mining.

 **HOUNDS** : purebred, champion   
stock, Bluetick Coonhounds.   
250.00$ LAFERTY KENNELS

Sam had seen it, crammed in with all the other advertisements for farming equipment and used cars and acreage, and before he could even think he’d pulled out his pocketknife and carefully and exactly cut it out, pushing all the other paper away to hold the small square. There it was in the palm of his hand, leaving him without a clue as to what to make of it or understand what it was making him feel.

He just looked at it and looked at it, night after night, thinking.

He’d always loved dogs, but he loved the institutions of dogs even more.

The small niggling promise that maybe,  _maybe_ , he could have something of his own. Something that didn’t belong to Dean or to obligations or to the mine but Sam alone – a wiggling, wriggling, puppy-breathed something that would depend on him, need looking after, require his attention and his time and training, something he could be master of.

Most importantly, something that wasn’t a coal shaft or the feel of cold metal in his hand or deep darkness where the light couldn’t touch. He shuddered to think of it. He didn’t know how Dean did it. How anyone could put themself out of reach of something as instinctual and basic as sunlight or wind or air. 

Every coonhound he’d ever seen flashed through his mind: redbones, black and tans, treeing walkers. They were beautiful noble dogs with elegant lines and long legs and floppy ears and compassionate, intelligent eyes and working-man sensibilities. They were dogs that men were  _proud_  of.

“Champion stock,” he had said quietly to himself, thinking of the dogs he sometimes saw passing through the hills on their ways to Arkansas and Tennessee for the hunting cups, tethered to truck beds or, more often, riding in the cabs beside their owners, long pink tongues unfurled and happy dog smiles on their droopy faces. Sometimes he’d see them on the way back with trophies glinting among the hunter’s luggage or ribbons laid out on the dashboards, and somewhere, in all the baggage, the coonskins themselves.

He knew that good money came from those competitions, if your dog was good enough and if you were smart enough.

But Sam didn’t have 250 dollars – not even close. Even if he had that kind of money it was ludicrous to spend it on a dog – not when he could use it to buy clothes or help Dean with repairs or the crops or anything else. Sam knew they struggled. Dean never said it, but Sam wasn’t a fool, and Dean didn’t go to great lengths to hide it.

It was hell to be poor in the hills. It meant hard work and the agony of watching it spoiled by a hailstorm or early frost or a flooded creek bed. People lost everything they’d ever owned, and here was Sam, fantasizing about coonhounds.

But they were beautiful dogs with their short sleek coats and big heavy paws and that beautiful marbled merle blue coloring. He could almost see it, his dog, collar bell clanging as it tore through the underbrush and reared up on the trunk of a pine, baying and bawling, tail wagging in victory and Sam and Dean walking side by side, listening for it.

That was worth a thousand dollars, Sam imagined. To see Dean pleased about something other than coal loads or a discount on mule feed; to walk with him down the old trails looking for arrowheads the way they did when they were little and unspoiled, before the hurt of losing mama had left their daddy a husk. Dean in his big Carhartt jacket and Sam in his, and all around them the amber smell of resin, and the moon bright and clear and blue above them, and the whisper of breath out of their mouths mingling with the cool mist of the mountains, and the eerie wind shaking through the pines, rustling up all the ghosts that tended to harbor themselves in such old and lonely places. They would walk and wait for the sudden and violent shudder in the air – that fine hound gone to baying, bruising the tender quiet.

He knew Dean still loved the hills, was desperate to wander like he did when they didn’t have to care so much. Before Emma and before his eyes had gone so flinty and before the back-breaking weight of responsibility.

Sam didn’t know if he could buy the chance of his brother’s youth back. Sam didn’t even have 250 dollars.

Not yet.

But he’d get it.

He’d get it and he’d get himself a coonhound, so help him God. It was the last summer before his eighteenth birthday and all the banners of his childhood were starting to come untied, but Sam clung to them with boyish determination and if Dean called him stubborn and a fool he couldn’t blame him. That was the Winchester in him, and Sam couldn’t help that. 

 He’d move heaven and earth if he had to, but he was gonna get himself a coonhound. A good coonhound – a coonhound so fine Dean would  _have_  to like him. They may make him shovel coal the rest of his life, earn that poor man’s dollar and break his back doing it, but he’d get himself a coonhound.

That had been May and now it was late August, and the coffee can under the loose floorboard in his bedroom was starting to get harder and harder to lift out. He’d started out there, in Elbow. He’d patched every fence for everyone he could think of, done every odd job that he could swindle a neighbor to pay him for. He’d carted cuts up and down the hills for weeks, hung laundry, gone down to the creek bed to dig through the muck for nightcrawlers and minnows for the fishermen. He’d done everything shy of putting down railroad or running moonshine and then he’d realized that there was nothing left to do.

Which is how he ended up in Carraway to look after the yard of Dr. Timothy Moore, Carraway’s  resident physician.

He came once a week to mow the lawn and see to the hedges and put down mulch or whatever else Joshua, the Moore’s old gardener, told him to. He’d already been coming for three weeks and earned nearly twenty dollars; the doctor was an exceptionally generous man especially when “a boy was trying to make his own way”, as he’d put it when Sam had showed up to answer the ad that Dr. Moore had put in the Pennysaver.

Once a week he came to the beautiful Victorian house and admired it, and tried not to let himself stare whenever he saw  _her_.

Sam’s ears were already red from the heat as he dragged the mower up the drive to lay down in the grass in the shadow of the house, but the minute the porch door opened he could feel his entire face catch fire.

He heard her name when she and her mother were getting into the big cream colored car.  _Jessica._

She had been wearing a striped skirt that reminded him of sherbet and a white tank top and he had watched the car drive all the way to the end of the street before he’d remembered he still had the garden hose in his hand and it was dripping all over his shoes.

Her name was  _Jessica_ , and she would come out on the porch and read magazines while he worked. They were the slick kind that came in subscriptions in the mail and talked all about celebrities and how to wear your hair at parties.

She had blonde hair and long legs that she tucked under her on the wicker furniture or stretched out while she pushed herself back and forth on the porch swing while she read, popping her gum or sipping tea or pop and wearing big round sunglasses that hid her eyes. When his back was turned he swore he could feel her peeking over the edge of the magazine to spy at him and it made butterflies bump against the walls of his stomach.

She’d done it every week since the first and every week Sam tried and tried to think of one thing to say to her but everything seemed so stupid and contrived or silly he couldn’t bring himself to even look her direction except when he was very, very, brave and chanced a glance at her.

He heard the porch door slam shut and the soft sound of her feet on the bare wood slats. She settled into the wicker lounge closest to the railing and opened her magazine and Sam looked her way only to see her eating an apple, crunching the skin and turning pages.

He did his work with her there, going about the business Joshua had left for him, keeping careful watch of the time and wiping his face and the back of his neck on an old rag he kept with him every once in a while. When he’d finished for the day he made sure to hose down blades of the mower on the driveway and his dirty boots and brought the stream to his mouth to take a drink.

“Is that your truck?”

Sam sputtered and the hose flailed, water splashing his shirt.

He coughed into his fist and turned his head to where the voice had come from, looking up.

She was leaning over the back of the loveseat, elbows on the railing, blinking down at him, magazine forgotten beside her and apple core abandoned on the floor.

“P-pardon,” Sam rasped and cursed because his voice was still recovering from the water going down the wrong pipe. “B-Beggin’ your pardon?” he said louder after another obnoxious cough.

She tilted her pretty head and slid her sunglasses down her nose towards Dean’s truck down by the curb.

“Is that your truck?”

Sam turned more fully towards her and quickly creased the hose so it wouldn’t drip so much while he replied.

“No,” Sam said, blushing. “That’s my brother’s.”

She nodded and smiled, glancing back to him. She cupped her chin in her hand and leaned further on the railing, and Sam tried not to look at the way her hot pants were riding up in the back.

“Don’t you have something you want to ask me?” she said after the pause and again, Sam wasn’t sure he had heard her correctly.

“What?” he said and she sighed, staring at him imploringly.

“I’ve sat here three times now, and I’ve made sure I wore my cutest shorts – the ones my mama doesn’t like,” she said behind her hand , aside, and Sam went crimson. “And I’ve watched you watch me, and you’ve watched me watch you, and you haven’t asked me for a glass of lemonade or what my name is or anything and I’m really worried I’m doing something wrong here.”

“Your name is Jessica,” Sam said abruptly and Jessica put the tip of her tongue between her front teeth when she grinned.

“Well, I guess that’s an easy one. Mama’s voice carries too far for her good…” she trailed away. “So what’s your name?”

“Sam,” Sam said and she leaned back a little.

“Ooh, Sam, I like that!” she smiled. “Well, Sam? Don’t you want to ask me anything now?” she teased and Sam swallowed. Her eyes were silly and bright and she seemed so at ease. Sam felt like he was six years old and trying to talk with missing front teeth.

“I – uh,” he started and she began chewing on the edge of her fingernail, waiting. “H-how do you get your hair like that?” he asked shyly and her face immediately fell into a confused sort of amusement.

“My hair?” she repeated on a laugh, touching a strand of it. Sam nodded.

“Yes’m,” he explained. “See, I – I ain’t never seen hair like that on a girl except in, you know, in pictures, and on the television at the drugstore, so I was just wonderin’ how you got it that way.”

A silence hung between them, Jessica at a loss for words. Her face was dusted with pink and she just kept smiling at him like he was the strangest thing she’d ever seen, but, then again, he figured a girl like her was used to something other than simple mountain boys.

“Hot rollers,” she said. “Hot rollers, I use hot rollers. I sleep in them too, but they’re not hot,” she nearly laughed again, this time at herself. “You know what those are, right?”

“I know,” he said, giving her a small smile and she sighed, leaning on the railing again.

“Well, I guess that was a fair question,” she said. “So it’s my turn now, I guess. You’re not from around here, are you?”

“How could you tell?” Sam said bashfully, interested in her answer. She shrugged her slim shoulders and pulled her shirt down a little.

“Just can,” she replied and Sam sagged. Was it really that obvious? She looked up and flashed him another impish grin. “Or maybe Joshua told me,” she started with an air of mystery, still smirking. “ _He_  said you came all the way down from Birdsfoot to answer daddy’s ad in the penny saver because you’re trying to buy yourself a bona fide coonhound.” She settled herself on her arms, watching him. “So are you?”

Sam knew he shouldn’t have told Joshua, but the old wiry man had asked him a mess of questions trying to see if he was trustworthy or not, and somewhere the little ad had been unfolded and shown and Joshua had chuckled and patted his shoulder and told him it was right fine to want a good dog.

“Elbow Holler,” Sam corrected. “It’s further back than Birdsfoot.”

“Elbow? That’s some name,” she laughed. “I’ve never heard of a town called Elbow.”

“It’s on account of the crick,” Sam explained. “Old Man’s Creek makes this turn and,” he mimicked the design with his own arm, pointing a little ways up to his shoulder. “We live right round here.”

“So? Are you really getting yourself a coonhound?”

Sam shifted a little, ever embarrassed.

“Do you think that’s funny?” he asked, and Jessica shook her head back and forth.

“I think it’s nice. Those are good dogs. Daddy’s friend has a few and they win big ribbons all the time and cash prizes.”

“My dog is going to be champion stock,” Sam boasted, not sure if that was even fair when he didn’t have all the money yet.  Jessica’s eyes widened in appropriate admiration anyway.

“I bet he’ll be handsome, just like his owner,” she said and Sam’s throat choked up a little.

“Jessica!” their heads snapped towards the front door where Mrs. Moore was leaning, struggling to put on a set of pearl earrings. “Jessica we have twenty minutes to get ready for the Seever’s, what are you doing out here? And you left your records on again they’ve been playing all afternoon -” her slim body peered around her daughter and he caught Sam standing there on the driveway. “Oh, hello. You must be the boy Tim hired!”

“This is Sam. He’s getting himself a coonhound, isn’t that interesting?” Jessica said, introducing Sam as if she had known him all her life. She sat up and picked up her empty apple core and magazine, walking towards her mother.

“Well, I suppose so!” Mrs. Moore laughed. “Sam’s a good name – Jessica’s great uncle was a Sam!”

Sam nodded and Mrs. Moore trailed her eyes once more to her daughter.

“Jessica Lee Moore what in heaven’s name are you wearing,” she hissed and Jessica looked at Sam and winked. “You are not wearing those to the Seever’s go upstairs and put on a dress –  _tea length young lady!_ ”

“Mama these are my favorites,” she whined. “Everyone wears them,” but Mrs. Moore was already shooing her into the big beautiful house. The woman paused and looked back out at Sam and then came across the porch herself, extending her soft white hand over the railing to shake.

“I’m Jenny, by the way!” she said brightly. “Excuse Jessica, she’s going through a phase.”

Sam shook her hand gently and she went back to smoothing her dress. She was a beautiful woman; older, refined. She kept her hair in a tight blonde French twist and her eyes were exactly like her daughters, though mostly Jessica favored the good doctor in the face. She was soft to the touch and smelled like expensive perfume and her dress made her skin look all peachy and healthy in the shade of the porch.

“It was nice to meet you Sam!” she said, going back into the house and Sam opened his mouth, but by the time he had figured out what to say she had gone back inside. The next thing he heard was the upstairs window right above him being cranked open and music came drifting out of it. He waited to see if Jessica would peek her head out, but there wasn’t even a flash of blonde hair, just the music and the sound of her clamoring around in her room getting ready.

Sam remembered the mower and resumed cleaning up, trying to draw it out as long as he could.

Being thorough was important, after all.

 

 

* * *

 

Dean gripped the pin and fed it into the machine, working the switches to drive it through, the bolter emitting a loud rattling sound as it spun the pin upwards. Behind him, Castiel Novak was watching and chewing on the remainders of his lunch, having stopped right at eleven cuts at Bobby’s behest. Dean shook off his eerie stare, focusing on the task at hand.

“Dean, you almost finished there?” Bobby said and Dean nodded and grunted in response, crouching to get a good look at it as it went up through the rock.

“Yeah – just give me a second…” he said, watching the spin and slowing the machine to a halt so the glue could set. After the apoxy had hardened he pulled the machine back down with a whisper of hot air and gave one final glace around to the surrounding top.

“Adam!” he yelled, waking his cousin from his end-of-day stupor. “Hand me that pick – come on boy, hustle.”

He was looking at a little buckle of shale on the mine ceiling, a small jut of the rock that could be problematic. He held his gloved hand out for the heavy metal pick and shuffled back so he could break the weak spot off, jamming the sharp metal end against it, careful not to disturb any of the surrounding rock.

A good five pound tumble of dark blue rock hit the mine floor and Dean pushed the heavy piece into a nearby pile with the toe of his boot, grunting. His ears pricked up for any dull cracks or low groans of the rock, but it was all quiet.

“We’re clear,” he called, finally satisfied, and nodded to Adam. “You pick up the boxes and get all the pins put up,”

“Yeah, yeah,” Adam drawled. “I know.”

Dean clapped the dust off his hands and as he turned to get his tools, he found himself face to face with the operator.

“Christ –,” he hissed, stepping back, and Castiel looked impassively on.

“Do they have a laundry service?” Castiel said and Dean caught his heart beating quicker from the startle. The man had a smear of coal across his face that made his eyes so bright and so unnervingly blue – even more than before – that Dean couldn’t look away.

“If you’re gonna ease around like that from now till kingdom come, we’re going to have trouble,” Dean began and Castiel blinked. “And yes. But it costs extra. Quarter for shirts, double for sets.”

Castiel looked unimpressed.

“I just work here,” Dean said. “Adler’s rules, not mine.”

He bent and picked up his tool belt and when he straightened Castiel was still there, holding his lunch pail against his hip and looking up at the place where Dean had chiseled off the rock, brow slightly furrowed under the brim of his helmet in some sort of contemplation.  

He looked back at Dean for a long moment and then pushed past him, on his way out.

“Well he’s pleasant,” Victor said, coming from another chamber where he had been putting the scoop away for the next shift.

“You caught that?” Dean laughed tiredly. “I’m definitely inviting him to the game Sunday.”

They both chuckled and stood there a moment more. Bobby yelled the last call for the mantrip and Dean sighed.

“Come on,” Victor said lightly, slapping Dean’s back. “Always loads easier on payday.”

Dean could only smile and rub at his face. When he pulled his hand away small specks lingered – flashes of bright and violent blue that followed him all the way out of the mine and were only intensified by the bright and sudden presence of the sun.

\--

Dean was more than relieved to see his brother standing with the other boys, most of them holding their father’s mules with the sleds hitched to the back. Plenty of folks had trucks, too, but it was just easier to walk Daisy down and take the sled, especially over all the back paths. He looked winded, which told Dean he’d probably hurried to make it on time, but Dean didn’t mind so much so long as he was there.

“You need to wash up?” Sam asked when his brother came trudging over, the whistle blaring to signal that the small interim between shifts was starting. Dean shook his head.

“Too tired. I’ll do it at home,” he said this as he lit a cigarette and sighed the smoke out once he’d inhaled, nodding at the mule. “You load up that sled and we’ll head back.”

Sam got to work, passing his mule in front of the long line where two other miners were dumping the cuts into the sleds and turned her around to where Dean was waiting and speaking to Victor. They shook hands and waved to each other and parted, Sam joining Dean in a few steps.

“So how’d it go?” Sam asked as they walked, Dean waving to trucks and buddies as they passed.

“Fine,” Dean mumbled, pulling his envelope out of his pocket and inspecting his check. He’d have to go to town to get it cashed, which was a pain, but something he couldn’t avoid. Everything seemed in order on it – they hadn’t skimmed any off the top for once. “New operator pulled eleven cuts.”

“Eleven?” Sam said, shocked, and Dean breathed in, folding the check back up and slipping it away where it wouldn’t get dirtied from the dust still on his clothes. “Jesus,” Sam added softly.

“Some kind of fuckin’ miracle,” Dean mumbled. “We’ll see how long it lasts though. Might have just been showing off.”

“Still,” Sam said. “Does that mean a bonus for you?”

“You kidding?” Dean laughed, looking at his little brother. “Hell no! That’d be something wouldn’t it. A bonus. Hot damn. I’d take me a vacation.”

Sam smiled and they marched along, Daisy and Sam and Dean, the sled trundling along behind them. They came to the ferry across the creek and Sam helped Dean pull the rope to take them across; a woman neighbor crossed the rope bridged next to it spied them and waved as she passed.   Dean didn’t look at the water, his eyes set firmly on the opposite bank, and Sam could see the line of sweat around the collar of his shirt, leaving a thin film of coal dust against his neck that trickled down his back, the same on his temples and his hairline.

Like black tears falling, skimming around Dean’s nose as he hauled the rope back again; when they were safely across Dean pulled an old handkerchief from the bib of his overalls and mopped at his face, his breathing a little labored.

Sam was content to wait until he felt good enough to walk, Daisy lifting her head drowsily in the heat and nuzzling at his shoulder.

They walked the red dirt roads and soon came up to the little dove gray house on the hill with its weather-beaten shingles and peeling siding looking almost beautiful in the end of day intensity of the sun, that last pulse of light onto the world before it bunked down in the bowl of the valley. 

“Karen’s started supper for you,” Sam said as they came up the drive to the house. Dean didn’t say anything but pushed his brother a little, moving to take Daisy’s reins in his own hand.

“Get on in the house, I’ll put her up.”

“Dean,” Sam protested, but Dean insisted, and Sam sighed. “At least let me get your water started,” he pleaded, and Dean shook his head, resolute.

“Get on in the house help her with supper,” he said sternly, and Sam finally relented, turning away.

“You’ve got a lifetime of shoveling coal ahead of you,” Dean called as Sam went up the porch steps, opening the screen door with a squeal and going inside.

“One more day of not doing it won’t kill you,” Dean said to himself once his brother had disappeared into the warm glow of the house.  Cicadas whirred in the trees around him, signaling dusk, and he tried to take another breath, and then another – and it was easier the second time.

He looked at the mule and she nuzzled at his chest, smelling for sugar or mint.

“Alright, alright,” Dean said, leading the creature around the back of the house to the little mule shed. He rolled up his sleeves and unhitched the sled from her, dragging it with a low grunt down to where the cellar doors were sunk into the ground. He’d see to Daisy first and then set up the furnace for his bath water.

In the cool shade a cluster of Virginia Bluebells had come up, nestled against the corner of the house, and the petals swayed when he walked by them on his way to see to the little mule.

\--

It was refreshing to stand by the pump and wash his face and arms before filling the bucket up; to simply crouch there and even take a little drink of the metallic tasting water and finger comb it through his hair and over the back of his neck. He’d breathed a few times, felt the slight pinch of his lungs, and then the tension release when he coughed into his fist or hand, air coming easier.

He could hear talking in the house and the clatter of plates – Karen or Sam had opened one of the kitchen windows to let in the cooling air, and the warm smell of sweet corn and chicken drifted out and made his stomach fist with sudden hunger.

A few minutes later Dean was sloshing the low trough at the back of the mule stall, humming under his breath as he did so.

It was an old tune, one he had known since he was a boy, and he always liked to hum or whistle to himself at the hazy end of day when no one was around to hear.

He bent with a slight sigh, trading the pail of water for the one full of grain at the foot of the trough, and hefted this up to a peg on the shed wall, his song trailing to a soft stop.

His mother had done this same chore every day of his short boyhood in the same little shed, traipsing across the chicken run in her yard boots and flour sack dress instead of coveralls while his father washed up at the stand beside the back door. She’d haul the coal to the cellar too and shovel it into the same little furnace.  It was on the trips to water the mule – a noble thing they had called Fella - in the falling shadows of her long days, that she had idled that little song into existence.

At night, when everything was dark and quiet except for the faint warm glow of the coal oil lamp, she would sing it to him to coax him into sleep.  It was the little song, he knew, that brought out unnamed something about the smallness of the mule shed and made the way the faintest stripes of fading sunlight began to creep through the slats come to the forefront of his mind. It was the same something in the little song that was in the mule shed and made him remember his mother with such undeniable devotion and affection.

It was a part of himself he allowed only there, before even the cock crowed to announce sundown to the rest of the world and the nighthawks started up their dizzy chant. The doves nesting in the rafters cooed and huddled together, feathers rustling.

“Come on,” he said lowly to the dozing mule behind him. The animal twitched to life and nudged past his arm to get to her feed, snuffling at the pail before digging in. Dean patted her neck and scratched lightly between her ears while she ate, trailing his hand down to her strong shoulder. She was a gentle, sensible, creature and Dean had always been fond of her; she performed well and was good natured enough to make the task of looking after her more inviting than it could have been.

 “Good girl, Daisy” he continued, patting her broad back and lapsing into thought.

He couldn’t shake the miner operator’s eyes. They lingered in the back of his head and it was irritating that he couldn’t get them out.  

He blamed it on his tiredness and his reluctant curiosity; he always was a sucker for a mystery, and Castiel Novak was a big one.

The creature made a small sound of contentment, chewing her grain, and Dean backed out of the shed after he made sure there was enough hay to satisfy her for the night piled in the corner of the stall. Dean knew he spoiled the animal; there was always a bit of mint or a few licks of sugar and a kind hand brushing her down at the end of a hard day, and this one was no different and she’d been grateful to him, he could tell.

It had always been his Father’s insistence to treat animals well. For one, they were expensive, and there wasn’t too much money floating around to buy a new mule if the one you had went lame _. A mule who likes his master minds him_ , John used to say. At one time his father might have added “just like any man” to the end of such a statement, but after Mary died he didn’t extend the same courtesy, even to his sons.

Dean left the shed and wandered back out across the yard. A few chickens nestled under the coop rustled their feathers as he passed and the hog grunted in his wallow at the sound of his footfalls, swollen body shifting in the mud.

At dusk the house was a soft gray smudge of shadow a few feet in front of him, and Dean paused for a moment before making his way up the steps. He looked out to the edge of the property, facing down into the valley: the mountains rose up on either side, cloaked in a muted gray-green. Edges of sunlight were beginning to crest over their peaks .

Above, the sky was blending into a milky blue and lavender with a halo of bright orange and red.

He stood still, watching the sun set. In the 480 million years the mountains had been around that was one thing that had not changed so drastically. The peaks themselves had been ground down to a gentle roundness, but the sun was still bright and violent as it struck the valley, as if it remembered far-before days when the land wasn't so sloped. When the mountains tore up into the sky, a maze of cliffs far greater than these - if that was how you measured greatness.

Maybe that was why it was so slow to go down in Johnson County. The last rays still held onto the land with golden fingers spreading wild over the pines into every crevice, reluctant to pull away.

The bright orb continued its slow edge downwards and the softness of its fading light touched Dean’s face and reflected against his eyes, softening them to the same green-gray as the mountains. The clouded valley lit up in kaleidoscopic wonder, a dream-catcher spin of color, the sun hovering halfway over the earth. Light tumbled and ran in rivers down the hillsides, spilling out and lighting up the back of the house. Shadows shifted, leaning, and Dean knew he needed to get inside, but something kept him planted there a few lingering moments.

Dean watched the 480 million year miracle in the making; land overflowing with light, the bowl of the valley unable to hold onto it all. The ribbon of water snaking a mile past his feet into the hills, Old Man’s Creek, was lit into a silver stream of mercury winding through the bottom of the hollow. 

The dying blaze washed in brilliant finale over the hill where the house was situated and surged across the yard like a tide, breaking over him: glorious and old and significant.

\--

Dean had been lying there for some time, alone with the dark in the bedroom, long after supper had been cleared away and the baby had been put to bed.

He listened as the dogs fought down the road for a while. It must not have been too much of a fight - a sharp yelp every so often and then the low rumble of growling mixing with the hum of train cars and crickets and other night sounds – and it didn’t last long. Soon there was nothing to hear but the train and the soft rain and insects.

He knew the cat was out prowling around in the yard. Lydia’s cat – a nameless scrap of creature that kept the rats out of the corn crib and out from under the house. He could imagine it very clearly: her flat yellow eyes in the dull moonlight as she groomed herself on the porch step in the tidy, methodical, way cats went about it. Yes, he could see her.  Licking her paw and swiping it over her pointed little face and muzzle. After she finished she would stand, back arched and shoulders hunched, and stretch languidly, whiskers twitching with drops of rain. She’d drag her claws down the bannister a few times and then fold herself up into the dark to catch some moths.

Tomorrow he would find her curled up on the chair leaned against the house wall, beside the door, her dainty feet pulled under her body and her tail touching the tip of her nose.

Dean listened very hard for the dogs, but they were gone. He would have heard them go by the house if they had come up the road. All six of them made quite a racket as they went anywhere, panting and yipping. If they ventured close enough, he would hear them snuffling around the grass and the siding sometimes. The tallest one could put its paws on the window sill and peek in the kitchen if it wanted.

She would go under the house, he thought. The dogs will be too big to get her there.

He had seen those dogs: big fellows. Lumbering, clumsy, things - most of them likely related from what he could tell. They were not bad dogs. They were only simple and instinctive, which was not their fault. They often smiled as they trotted by, and in the mornings Dean would see their dusty tracks on his way down the hill and he’d see where they’d bumped into one another and tripped up a bit over themselves, their prints smeared together in the loose clay.

The little cat would simply go under the house, Dean thought again.

The train horn moaned, signaling in the night.

It was so still in the bedroom. The quiet was unnerving; no background clang of machinery, no mine. Just the very quiet darkness.

He didn’t dare touch the emptiness on the other side of the bed. He let his fingers curl against his palm instead, and if the desire persisted he’d tuck them under his leg, close to his side.

He did not want to feel the small depression where Lydia had lay for so many nights; the soft dent in the mattress she had carved out. The old flat thing didn’t rise but stayed sunk, heavy with the old habit of holding her while she slept, or maybe, while she lied there like he was now.

He breathed slowly and evenly and did his multiplication tables, but it wasn’t much use.

He heard a tap squeak on as Sam got up to get himself some water, the flow rushing into the sink, right along the slight rust-stained path in the basin.

Dean’s mouth tasted like pennies.

He remembered the sharp smell of disinfectant and a woman in a starched white nurse’s uniform handing him a clipboard and a pen and Lydia standing behind him with her little carpet bag in her clenched hand, not having anything to say.

 Dean had cast sideways glances to her shadow on the floor and seen the taffy-stretch of her arms and legs and the bulge of her bag with all the clothes she owned. There was something freak and alien about her posture projected on the ground under the harsh fluorescent lights.

He’d signed his name in a hurried jumble on the line, and they had left him alone with her for a moment.

Her eyes lifted to him, fringed by her long lashes; a strand of her hair stuck to her lip and shuddered as she breathed She seemed stripped, as though she was wearing nothing, and her hands clutched her bag even when he reached forward to hug her, because he felt that was what she was supposed to do. Even though her face was pale and hollow with terrifying indifference. He reached forward, and she stopped him, holding a hand to his chest.

“Don’t,” she had whispered, and Dean knew it was her voice but it sounded like it wasn’t, like it had come from some other place, some other person, and she was only mouthing along.

“My dress is all wet,” she said, slightly annoyed at the idea. She looked down at the damp fabric and his eyes followed. She held up the edge of her skirt, bone-white legs sticking out underneath, skin slightly mottled  to a soft purple from the chill of the air conditioning.

“Oh – oh just look at me…” she snapped loudly, the sound echoing around the tiny waiting room, expressing her  upset. “Do you suppose they’ll give me a gown? I’m so embarrassed. I don’t want to wear this, it’s ruined – there was soap in the water -”

He didn’t know what to say and when he was silent she shook her head at him. She just kept plucking at her dress and he wanted to grab her, wanted to shake her, ask her _why_ , make sense of her, understand why her face went blotchy with an angry blush -

“This won’t do,” she said to him, staring down at the slightly wrinkled front, and every thought bottled itself up in his head. Tears welled in her eyes and her voice choked.

 “This won’t do at all.” 


	2. Chapter 2

Castiel blinked away the dust, sniffing. He didn’t mind the cold so much, but it always made his nose run, and his sinuses always seemed to be irritated when he was down in the shafts. He was sitting on his heels, back against the wall of the mine, fingers resting idly on the control box across his lap. It was a constant struggle to ignore the stiffness in his knees and legs, but  he couldn't move too much because it always caused some unnecessary ache in his back.

With a sigh, he lifted his hand away from the controls and pulled the edge of his glove into his mouth, wiggling his fingers free to stretch them better. His clammy skin met the chilled air and the muscles tightened; his breath softly pillowed around his mouth every time he breathed and he sniffed again (damn that dust) as he shook out his wrist, flexing his fingers a few times.

Everything seemed to have ground down to a temporary halt – they were advancing further under the mountain and their Boss had the radio glued to his ear one moment and his eyes glued to the maps the next, trying to discern where exactly the hollow began and where, precisely, they were. Castiel could hear the echoes of their grumblings faintly through the swinging plastic that partitioned him away from everyone else and his mouth twitched as he strained to follow their words, soft frown coming between his brows.

He could only make out a little; thin rock, bad top, the usual dangers that accompanied digging into a holler.

Nothing he hadn’t encountered before or overcome, not that the caution wasn’t warranted. Just dull in comparison to everything else they already knew could kill them at any moment, which was a long list, holler or no holler.

He scratched the damp skin under the line of his helmet with his now bare hand and did his best to smooth the matted curls so they wouldn’t itch so much. Just behind him he could hear Dean Winchester speaking to his helper – the gangly boy that favored him, possessing that same gruff surliness that Dean did. His cousin, the operator remembered.

That would certainly explain the similar shape of their eyes, as well.

Castiel tipped his head back, helmet thunking against the rock and light spearing up at the odd upward angle from his headlamp. The low ceiling rock had a faint gleam to it, not polished, but enough luster to notice, and the darkness seemed to dart away from the little beam. When he was young he would go wading in creek beds and catch minnows for his brothers, and it was a lot like that, the flickering darkness.

He blew another breath, feeling it fall against his face, warmer than the air around him, a gust of dragon’s breath, a sly bit of his spirit slipping away dust-hazy blackness of the mine. The darkness and stuffy air was almost viscous, like honey or sap, clinging to him all the time and lingering long after the day was over.

He put his glove back on, and as he did so he heard movement on the other side of the partition and turned his head towards it. It was the metallic sharp sound of Dean’s pick driving against a little flake of rock – he could hear him muttering to himself as he broke the little blister away and let the chips fall to the floor and followed the drag of his boot as he swept them back somewhere else.

Castiel didn’t know how he spotted them, these little buckled places, in the limited light and cramped spaces, but whenever there was a lull, there went Dean’s pick, scraping the ceilings smooth. It was a preventative measure that all bolt men did, or, at least, the ones Castiel had worked with in the past. Nothing slipped by Dean's clever eye. He seemed so finely attuned to the rock that he could tell with just a soft glance what rock could stay and what needed to come down.

Castiel had seen plenty of men start pulling down rock and making a bigger mess, a bigger crack, but Dean seemed to know the difference, something beyond Castiel’s own knowledge and something he had grown to be very impressed by.

It made disliking the man almost unbearable, and Castiel had wrestled with it many an hour alone in the mine, driving the miner into the seam, mind wandering and caught in small tight cycles of thought that the monotonous work brought.

He tried very hard to dislike Dean, to judge him by their first interactions, but the more he tried the harder it became.

He couldn’t blame Dean for his behavior, not really.

The man wore guilt like a heavy chain, dragging it along with him, and every link was something else, Castiel was sure, but one in particular belonged to the mine.

A man only six months earlier had been crushed to death and while he knew that nobody _blamed_ Dean (it was an accident and the nature of the mine was always unpredictable) the man was still dead, and people always wanted to know why.

It almost didn’t make sense, really. Dean was so good at his job; perhaps that was why the accident had affected him so much.  

The words Dean had said, so angry and emphatic that misty morning, weren’t really for Castiel at all. It was no wonder he was so obsessive over the state of the ceilings, the distance of the pins and how they were driven. He often asked Castiel about his pace, how fast he thought he could get through a particular cut based on the rock that they could see, peering over the huge studded barrel of the operator, heads bent as Castiel pointed out the qualities, the shifting distances as the seam meandered through the rock, Dean’s eyes half squinted and his head nodding along. Castiel did the best he could to predict - maybe 28 inches, maybe 32 a moment later. He'd keep a good ear on it. 

His eyes wandered with his lamplight to the crouched machine a few feet away from. Not having anything else to do, he sat up to look at it, feeling the cold, damp, and metal through his glove. It was a good machine; it was the best one he’d worked with, and it was obvious the company had kept up its warranty. He touched another edge of it and swept his eyes from the back of its long wire to tail to the little crooked teeth at the head.

It wasn’t a beautiful machine. It didn’t have to be.  

But it had its own sort of presence in the sooty air and even though Castiel was _by himself_ he never got the sense that he was alone as long as the machine was with him, growling along. He took the pad of his thumb and rubbed off a spot of grease on the dull body, feeling the rough unfinished metal underneath bumping through his glove.

He crawled on his knees down the line of it, wiping away excess coal and flakes of rock as he did, dirtying his glove beyond repair.

They hadn’t told him much about the mine when they’d first hired him. Everyone around him seemed to suspect he had some kind of in, but he didn’t. They had approached him out in Rattlesnake, a small hamlet near the mine he had been working at, offering him better pay and a spot on the company property just in town.

He hadn’t thought too hard about it – his mother had touched his hand and told him it was God’s will, and it was better he follow than fight. She was a frail, strange, creature, their Naomi. Their father had died – died or left, the story always changed depending on who you were asking - when he was barely walking, the third to last in a slew of brothers and one sister crammed into the two bedroom house in the immigrant rows on the outskirts of Rattlesnake. 

His mother had been a laundress; she’d gone to the big wash houses attached to the mines and scrubbed the miner’s clothes every night for pennies, and before that the round heavy scrip. Her hands were rough from harsh lye and after she had hit you and scolded you she would cradle your face in her raw fingers and kiss your cheeks and tell you to be good.

“ _Fear God’s abandonment_ ,” she would say whenever one of them would come to her, crying because of some cruel trick Gábriel had turned on them or one of Mihály’s harsh  and unforgiving words. “ _That is the only thing that should frighten you_. _Everything else is the work of men, and men are animals. Do you put animals before God?”_

Castiel’s gloved hand slipped through the grease on a joint of the miner’s body. He took comfort in his mother’s convictions, even if he still didn’t really know the answer to her question. It had toughened him up, regardless.

His mother’s severity had ebbed over the long years and the burden of many tragedies. He knew she was relieved to see him leave Rattlesnake, and he knew she wanted to die but her vanity prevented her from doing such a thing while her children’s eyes were still upon her.

She had lived her whole life in their company knowing no privacy, and she refused to die with all the vulgarity of their tears and concern.

He sniffed, paying closer attention to the machine. There was hearsay that the previous operator hadn’t been able to control it, that it malfunctioned, but Castiel’s experience with it so far had been essentially flawless. He blamed the old operator’s sensitivities. It wasn’t easy to squirrel yourself away underground for hours a day, and it wasn’t unheard of for working against such darkness to get to a man. Darkness made a man flinty and sharpened his senses uncomfortably. A small spark seemed like an inferno, a soft break of noise a screech, a tumble became an avalanche.

\--

The decision was made to advance two cuts forward into the mountain, the first acting as a trial to test the rock. Castiel handled the machine with great caution, and the shift rolled on without incident and everyone seemed pleased; there was banter behind him when he paused the machine to adjust it and the sound of everyone’s jobs being done, and it made him relieved.

He hadn’t attempted much more conversation with Dean, or anyone, beyond the standard professional kind, but as the days passed Dean’s hackles had gone down substantially. He wasn’t entirely friendly but he didn’t seem to resent him so much, and when they talked it wasn’t forced as long as they kept it to business.

They’d developed their own sort of working rhythm and it had come shockingly soon and surprisingly easy, but other than this perpetual motion into the mine they didn’t communicate.

Castiel knew it had something to do with pride, but it was hard to tell who was responsible for what. So they worked in silence in an ebb and flow of Castiel working and Dean following, setting the pins in his ever-wondrous wake. Whatever Dean or the others considered him, they couldn’t fault his prowess, and he had become the butt of several gentle jokes about how they were all going to end up in China by next month if Castiel continued his pace.

Castiel had let himself slip back into the monotony of cutting, eyes closed, ears pricked, when he heard it. Something that wasn’t coal or rock; he could tell. It was rattling and he pushed through the rock, thinking it was just some other random mineral deposit momentarily caught in the belly of the machine, kept up with the seam, but still it rattled. A light clink that was more delicate than the other sounds around it.

Unable to ignore it, Castiel backed the machine off and slowly put the control box down, starting the crouching walk towards the machine.

“Hey!” he heard behind him and Castiel turned, blinking in the sudden ray of Dean’s headlamp. Dean stared at him from the curtain, one arm holding it aside. “Everything alright? Coal stopped comin’,” he asked and Castiel kept staring at him and then gestured towards the machine.

“Something is caught in the bottom,” he said and the bolt man wiped his nose, nodding.

“You need me to get Boss?”

“No, I think I can just clear it myself,” Castiel explained and Dean nodded again.

“Well alright; we’ll be behind you. You need anything, shout.”

Castiel watched him go, and turned back to the machine.

He moved till he was looking down the neck of the miner, where the metal jutted and crossed to form the skeleton of hydraulics, lamp gleaming over its coal-dusted mechanisms. He was only sweeping his eyes over for mechanical issue, a slick puddle of fluid or something bent out of shape to produce the strange noise, when something glittered faintly down in the scoop, where the sweeper arms rotated and flung the coal back towards the conveyer. Like he thought, something had been caught there, lodged in the coal against one of the edges of the sweeper.

His eyes squinted and he bent his head closer, under the neck of the miner, gloves smoothing away coal dust and slack rock, feeling in the darkness for what it could be. The tips of his gloved fingers fell over it and his face dimmed in confusion. Wordlessly, he plucked it up from belly of the miner and brought it to his coat, rubbing the grime away. He wiggled his fingers out of his glove once more to hold it more securely, holding it up to his face to better see in the musty yellow light.

He didn’t know what to say, staring at it, mouth falling slightly open.

He brought it closer, unable to reconcile what he was seeing. How could such a thing – he looked to the face beyond the miner; untapped coal. Virgin rock. There was no way it could have been dug out; that didn’t make sense.

He immediately thought of the night crew – he didn’t know their operator, didn’t know their maintenance man, perhaps one of them had lost it looking over the machine.

Yes, that was it. Surely. He felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle and he pulled out his handkerchief and wrapped the offensive thing inside it and shoved it into his pocket and pulled himself away from the machine.

The small cavern seemed even smaller then, shrinking in on him, and he breathed a little harder, looking around, hand feeling over the small bulge in his pocket where the thing was. He looked at the miner, innocuous in its stillness.

He was thinking far too into this, there was some plausible explanation, he knew. Even if it was just a prank some member of the crew had done on him.

He’d simply bring it to the foreman, have him deal with it. Yes, that was it.

It wasn’t meant for him; it couldn’t have been meant for him.

* * *

 

That shift the whole energy was off. They were all feeling it. On the other side of Castiel’s curtain a sinister trickle slithered down their backs as they went about their works pretending nothing was amiss.

The threat was obvious, but the minute they’d started drilling, they all pretended not to notice. It was the only way to get through it.

The holler could give at any moment, entomb them all, and the only thing standing between it was Dean and the bolter.

Dean kept himself busy singing songs under his breath and thinking of work he’d need to do, the baseball game on Sunday, anything to keep him from stressing himself into a stupor where something could go wrong. He knew that he was good at his job, that he would do what he needed to do to get them all safe on the other side, but the pressure was daunting and though he’d tamed the fear that came each time he stepped under the unsupported rock that Castiel had drilled into, it still licked at his hands and made them cold.

Castiel’s jarred stop had shaken him up; he trusted the operator, he did, he’d proved himself capable, but it was the kind of day that didn’t tolerate the unexpected.

It was rounding on lunchtime, and Dean let Adam go on ahead – he only had one more pin to set after Castiel’s interruption, and he could easily take care of it himself. He preferred it – he hardly let Adam lift a finger on days like these anyways, the boy still too green to realize the importance of it all.

It had happened in a blink

He never heard Castiel come up behind him, but then again, he never did – and the man had a way of sidling up to him that always made his heart leap.

He couldn’t hear over the bolter once he started it up – didn’t hear the snap or the first chunks of rock fall three feet behind him. Just the sudden jerk of his shoulder as he was yanked backwards, a five foot long slab of slate sitting where he had just been standing and throwing dust everywhere, quaking through the mine.

His jaw rattled with the force of being pulled back and sent sprawling, his back brace cutting deep into his skin and sure to leave a bruise and he only prayed that the twist and the fall hadn’t thrown his back out altogether. His head spun in his helmet and he slowly lifted himself up, looking at the hazy outline of the rock through the spiraling debris.

Something grabbed him and pushed his head down as a few other pieces flaked from the top, and then, it all went still for a moment. There was the scramble on the other side of the rock and Dean could make out lantern lights flitting back and forth in the dark and voices rising.

Dean felt himself coming back into his body, assessing where he was and what had happened. The floor of the mine was cold, but there was something else that wasn’t the floor at all; it was warm and had give to it.

“Are you alright?” Castiel said it softly, near his ear, close enough to feel the hot puff of his breath against his hair, and Dean realized the weight on his back was Castiel curled over him, and his arm was tucked around his shoulders to shield his face from the falling rock.

Dean noticed his hands were shaking and he looked up at the rock again and then back down to the mine floor.

“Dean?” Castiel said again, slowly pulling away from him. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

“No,” Dean croaked, getting his breath back. “I’m fine – I think…” he trailed off and experimentally moved his legs and his arms now that he had the room. “Yeah, I’m fine. Christ.”

“I tried to say something but I don’t think you could hear me,” Castiel said, entirely too calm, and Dean could feel him watching as Dean sat up more fully, inspecting all his parts and cataloguing what little damage there was. His helmet light flickered and he pulled it off his head to screw the jostled bulb back in. 

Boot steps echoed and Bobby appeared, moving around the rock gently and coming into the little chamber to look at them.

“You boys alright?” he panted and Dean nodded, turning to Castiel for verification.

“Oh damn,” he said when he looked at Castiel’s face – the operator had a long line of blood that started at his hairline and was dripping down the bridge of his nose. He was currently trying to keep it from going into his eye, blinking it away.  Dean searched in the pockets of his clothes for a rag and out of instinct reached forward to press it against the wound. “Hold still now, you’ve gone and gashed yourself,” he said and Castiel put his fingers over Dean’s to press the cloth there.

“Cas here’s got a nasty bad cut, Boss” Dean said to Bobby who stepped a little closer to see for himself. Castiel’s fingers twitched and his eyes rolled to Dean at the use of the impromptu nickname.

“Yeah, I’ll go radio it in,” Bobby affirmed, putting a hand on Dean’s shoulder. “You scared the good Jesus out of me,” he added before moving back out the way he’d come, pulling his radio out. “Ash, come here and check this bolter! Pins jammed up in here -” Dean heard him yell from farther away.

“It doesn’t hurt,” Castiel said, glancing away from Dean and Dean frowned in response.

“Well it’s going to once all that adrenaline wears off,” he peeled the rag away to look at it as best he could and reached into his belt for his pen light, clicking it on. He traced the beam over the cut; not too deep, but long. It must have happened when he’d pulled Dean back and his helmet had fallen off. “Keep holdin’ that on there,” Dean said sternly, guiding Castiel’s hand back to his forehead with firm pressure. He looked over his shoulder and sighed.

“We’re gonna lose a hell of a lot of time breaking that shit up."

The rock was huge and could have easily weighed over five hundred pounds. 

He was still so stunned to be in one piece. Dragging a man out of the way so he could live was one thing, but it wasn’t uncommon to lose a leg or a foot, or even an eye. He looked back to Castiel before the commotion of the other men reached them, before the moment was gone.

“What were you doing?” Dean said and Castiel lifted his eyes, scrubbing at a bit of blood that was drying. He looked at the rock.

“I was going to tell Boss about something,” he said but there was a slight hesitance in his voice. “Just that everything was fine…and I was walking towards you, and I saw the rock begin to fall, and I tried to say your name but you couldn’t understand me over the noise, so I just did what I needed to do.”

“Well, thank you,” Dean said and he held out his hand, trying to accept the story with less suspicion. “Not every man would risk his own skin to save someone he doesn’t even like.” He smiled at the end of the statement, gesturing with his hand again. “Oblige me?”

 Castiel’s eyes drifted from Dean’s face to his open hand and  took it with his free one.

“For the record, I don’t dislike you,” Castiel said, aside. “At least not enough to let you die in a horrible accident.”

When their eyes met there was something less harsh about Castiel’s eyes, a playfulness that Dean had never seen before. The operator smiled nervously before it faded back to its usual serious line, but his eyes remained changed.

“Hot damn, if I didn’t know any better I’d think you were actually joking,” Dean chuckled, still holding the operator’s hand. It was warmer than the air around them and dirty, but then again, so was his.

“Got the EMT waitin’ to check you out!” Bobby yelled, and Dean dropped the miner’s hand.

“Well, after you,” he said holding out his hand and Castiel seemed irritated.

“It’s really not necessary,” he continued and Dean stood with a sigh, brushing off his pants. He held out his hand again, this time to help the other one stand up.

“Come on, might as well let em’ clean it,” he insisted and Cas took his hand again, letting himself be pulled up.  Dean nodded at the sight of him and one after the other they climbed around the rock and past the rest of the miners all watching them with concern. Victor and Benny came right up to Dean, begging to know what happened and Dean shrugged and gestured to where Castiel was speaking to Bobby.  

“Ain’t much to say.” Dean started, eyes lingering on the operator with his talented hands hanging at his sides. “Must have been the pin, I don't know. Maybe I put it too far over and it shook through and broke it up above me. Whatever it was, he yanked me out right in time. Cas saved my life.”

“Cas?” Benny said incredulously, a mocking smile worming its way on to his face. Dean gave him a hard stare.

“Yeah,” he said, glancing at the operator again. This time he was surprised to see Cas glance right back and smile that odd little smile again, even while Bobby kept prattling on.

“Cas,” Dean finished.

\--

The EMT on staff patched Cas up and they were sent on to the little trailer to file a report on the accident for review later.

In the end, they were given the rest of the shift off for their trouble, which didn’t surprise Dean very much. Castiel looked positively ill in the company of the mine managers. He couldn’t tell if this was because Zachariah Adler was such a vile person or because of his injury. Either way, after they were dismissed they both found themselves standing out in the yard without anything to say for themselves.

 “Empty five hours, boys,” Dean said, mocking Adler’s too-toothy voice and wide manic eyes. He pulled out his cigarettes and paused to shake some of the dust out of his hair.  “All smiles now but they’ll dock my pay for sure…” he looked towards the opening of the mine, lighting the cigarette between his dirty fingers.

“Who will handle the bolter?” Cas asked and Dean coughed lightly.

“Boss’ll handle it well enough. That pin'll take em' a good half hour to get out. Bolter fucked it all up when the rock came down and my hand came off of it.” He shrugged uneasily and looked back to Cas, holding out his cigarettes to him. Cas looked at the little box.

“I have my own,” he began and Dean held them out farther.

“Just take a damn smoke, would you? You look like you’re about to keel over.”

Dean tapped the box on his hand to shake a single one out and Castiel took it, coming closer so Dean could light a match and hold it to the end. Castiel puffed and they stood there together for a moment, watching the EMT at the edge of the yard talking to Garth.

“How’s your head?” Dean said after a long moment, his head finally clearing enough to ask.

Cas padded his fingers at the butterfly bandage, eyes rolling up.

“Fine.”

“Well that’s good,” Dean said, and it was. He was glad nothing more had come of it. They stood there for a while more until Dean cleared his throat.

“So what are you gonna do?” Dean asked and Cas put one of his hands in his pockets, the other flicking ash to the dirt.

“Go home, I suppose,” he said plainly and Dean nodded.

“Where’d they stick you? Down in those old company houses?”

Cas shook his head.

“We had relations here at one time and the house was put in my Father’s name when they left for West Virginia, so I’m staying there.”

“How far?” Dean probed and Castiel reached up to scratch under his eye before bringing his cigarette back to his mouth.

“Past the old mill,” Castiel said, referring to the creek-side textile that hadn’t been running for decades.

“No shit,” Dean marveled. “Right where Old Man’s meets that other one?” He was referring to the convergence of Old Man’s Creek and another, resulting in a broad band of water that was nearly a river.

Cas nodded. “Only a little farther.”

“Damn. That’s a hell of a walk every day,” Dean continued and Castiel huffed a little. “Would have been easier just to let them put you up, if you don’t mind me saying.”

“I don’t,” Cas said, taking another long drag after the words. Dean stared at him, trying to comprehend what exactly it was that was going on, this odd attempt at conversation. He couldn’t understand why he felt so off balance, but he did, and every time Castiel responded to him in the almost-friends way that he did it got worse.

“Well, I was gonna stop off in Birdsfoot,” Dean said suddenly, awkwardly.

Castiel looked up at him, blue eyes glinting from the darkness of his dirty face.

“If you’d like to join me,” Dean hurried to add, before Castiel could insist his apologies for keeping him. “I’ll buy you a co-cola. Least I can do for saving my life. Plus, it’s hot as hell out here.”

Cas continued to stare at Dean, and Dean half expected him to say ‘no’, but he didn’t.

He simply said “alright”, and Dean found himself trying a smile on his serious companion. 

To his surprise, he wasn’t upset when the smile wasn’t totally returned. He knew that Castiel was alright with it; he could tell by the shade of his eyes, the place where all the answers seemed to hide.

“Alright then,” Dean said, moving so the miner could fall into step beside him.

\--

There were only two places to get pop in Birdsfoot: the machine outside of the one-pump gas station and the drug store, which had a long sandwich counter at the front.

It would have been easy to just slip a few dimes into the pop machine, but for some reason Dean found himself gravitating to the little drug and soda fountain. The old bell chimed above their heads as he lead Castiel inside, going to sit at the far end of the bar, away from where a few old men were hunched over their coffee and newspapers. He got up onto the stool and Castiel followed, the two of them waiting patiently for the old man who worked the counter to come and deliver their coke.

It had been a long time since Dean had sat at that counter – a long time.

When his father had been alive and they were young Dean would take Sammy there before John’s shift was through so they could meet him and walk back up the hill on payday, just like Sam did now. Dean would put a quarter in Sam’s palm and let him pick out 25 cents worth of sack candy, watching as his little brother’s head bobbed back and forth in the sweets aisle. In the end he always came back with a bag full of all the kinds Dean liked best, which was never the point, but Dean loved Sam that much more for it.

Dean would only ever have enough money left for one coke, but the old man who worked the counter back in those days would bring two glasses and split it for them and even add ice or a few maraschino cherries if they asked.

Now he could buy himself his own, and the glass bottle was cold and the coke was sharp and burning when he drank it and left his teeth feeling gritty with sugar. Cas didn’t drink his right away, waiting for some of the carbonation to dissipate before taking a careful sip, smiling. He loved pop – loved the syrupy taste and the way it made his tongue fizz.

Growing up he hadn’t been afforded the luxury. Most of the candy he ate was what his brother Gábriel stole from the company store his mother went to, and even then it was only what Gábriel’s insatiable sweet tooth was willing to give up. It never stopped Castiel from taking on Gábriel’s chores and trying to get in good graces so he’d be the first to come to Gábriel’s mind when it was time to split up the spoils of his sin.

Castiel was always willing to swear secrecy when things like chocolate were on the line; to him it was even more important than the satisfaction of watching Gábi being scolded.

Perhaps that’s what had scared him so much about the little thing wadded in his pocket; it seemed so like something his brother might have done. Some terrible trick…

“So your kin ain’t from around here,” Dean said, and Cas shook himself back into the moment.  Dean had lit another cigarette and had pulled the ashtray towards them, laying his spent match against the rim.

“My grandfather moved to Kentucky in 1902,” Cas explained, folding his arms loosely on the counter top. He was glad for the distraction of Dean’s questioning. “He heard that there was work here in the mountains and he took the chance. He mined in Hungary too, so getting a job was easy.”

Dean couldn’t fathom a place like Hungary, let alone crossing the Atlantic on a crammed boat. He didn’t even know what the ocean looked like outside of textbooks and the atlas his mother had.

“Did your daddy mine?” Dean continued and Cas didn’t blink.

“Until the shaft fire when I was two. They never recovered his body. At least, that’s what my mother told me. My brothers say he left, but they’re not exactly trustworthy,” he frowned at the end of this statement and Dean felt himself smiling at it.

“My daddy worked right up until the day he died. He had that walkin’ pneumonia, you know?”

Castiel nodded in understanding.

“That must have been hard for your mother.”

“She died when I was real small. So how many brothers you got?” Dean said, clearing his throat a little and abruptly changing the subject. “I’ve only got one and he’s a pain in the ass. Too smart for his own damn good…”

“Two older, one younger, and I have a twin brother,” Cas answered. “And my older sister, Anna.”

Dean’s eyes widened in appreciation.

“A twin? What’s that like?”

Castiel shrugged; it was always a novelty to some people, Jakab and him.

“What should it be like?” the man teased, and Dean looked at him expectantly. “Do we finish each other’s sentences?”

“I heard about it on the radio once,” Dean continued. “That twin-telepathy and what-not. I bet you and your brother are a real side show. Bet you’ve got that psychic thing.”

“Hardly,” Castiel snorted. “We had to share everything and Jakab hated it by the time he was old enough to realize he never got his own shirt or his own bed.”

“Well, I’d hate that too,” Dean smiled. “What kind of name is that, anyway? Jakab.”

“It’s Hungarian for James,” Cas said. “He made everyone call him Jimmy outside of our house. Milhály is Michael, Gábi is Gabriel, Annuska is Anna, Jakab is James, Andris is Andrew.” He reached forward to tuck the edge of a napkin back into the dispenser.

“And Castiel? That’s got to be the worst,” Dean said, soft and wondering, and Castiel looked at him.  
  
“Cástiel is just Cástiel,” he answered, as though it was obvious, purposefully stressing the syllables differently. He glanced back to the napkin holder, a small worry coming between his brows. “I don’t know where my mother got it.”

A sort of heaviness had come over Castiel, and Dean shifted in his seat, wondering if he had accidentally touched some nerve. Castiel worried his wound absently.

“That’s a big family,” Dean marveled, breaking the quiet, and Castiel didn’t say anything. “And they all let you come out here by yourself?”

“They encouraged me,” Cas said on a sigh. “My sister was sorry about it, but she knew it was the right thing to do; I’m making a better salary here.” He fiddled with one of the bottle caps left behind. “You have a younger brother, though?” He straightened himself on the stool, letting the bottle cap go, giving Dean his full attention.

Dean happened to be mid drink and hmmed around the burn of carbonation in his throat.

“Kid brother. Well, not so much a kid anymore. He’s seventeen and growing a foot every time I look at him. He’s makin’ out to look like a regular bean pole,” Dean was quiet for a moment. “I’ve got a daughter too.”

Cas’ eyes widened, then softened and strayed to Dean’s hand. Dean’s fingers curled self-consciously; he didn’t put his ring on anymore. He put it in his nightstand drawer, in the beaten envelope that Lydia had sent her last letter in.

“Oh, I didn’t know you were married,” Cas said, and Dean rolled his shoulder, taking another drink of his coke and then putting it heavily back down on the counter.

“Lydia and I’s separated,” he clarified.  

“I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault,” Dean, inspecting the nearly-empty coke bottle. “She got sick and couldn’t stay with us anymore. She moved to Portland to live with her sister and brother-in-law about five months ago. ”

He could feel Cas’ eyes on him, curious and sympathetic. Maybe if he knew the whole story he wouldn’t feel so sorry for Dean. Maybe he’d think differently.

“What’s your daughter’s name?” Cas said and Dean found himself smiling all over again and reaching behind him to get his wallet. He flipped it open and pulled out the little department store photograph they’d had taken when they’d taken the train all the way up to Ashland for something. Dean couldn’t remember why they were there, exactly, but he remembered the day, and Emma’s yellow gingham dress with the lace collar and her little mary janes with the frilled socks. They’d bought her an ice cream cone and laughed as she ate it and he’d bought Lydia the little pearl drop earrings she’d seen in a shop window as a surprise. It had been a good day.   

Dean’s moved, canting his body to show Cas more clearly.

“That’s my pride,” he grinned, Castiel taking the photograph so gingerly in his fingers. “Emily Louise.” 

“She’s beautiful as her name,” Castiel said honestly, looking at the soft strawberry blonde hair and round chubby face. “She’s still a baby,” Castiel smiled a little.

“A little over a year,” Dean said. “She’s smart too. And pretty as they come. Picture don’t do it any justice, but she is.”

“I’m sure,” Castiel insisted, handing the photograph back, watching Dean tuck it away again, still glowing a little.

Dean took small sips of his coke in a thoughtful quiet, Cas back to fiddling with the bottle cap.”

“It must be hard to be away from her,” Castiel said. “Working, I mean.”

Dean exhaled softly.

“I know I miss a lot,” he replied. “She’s started talkin’, you know? Not much in the way o’ words but close, and I know her first one ain’t gonna be Daddy. Mine wasn’t, Sammy’s wasn’t.” He pushed his empty bottle away from him and Castiel watched the movement.

“You don’t have anybody waitin’ on you at home, do you?” Dean joked slightly embarrassed. “Nobody’s wife is gonna fuss at me for keepin’ you this afternoon?” He studied the operator’s face and it was reserved, but he smirked.

“No,” he laughed. “I’m nearly Twenty-five with no wife and no children – my mother is beside herself.”

Dean found it so hard to believe; a face like Castiel’s didn’t seem like the kind that would stay single.

Even covered in coal dust he made out like Montgomery Clift, all sensitive eyes and serious mouth, the sort of features that looked timeless and aristocratic in photographs and made young girls swoon. Maybe that’s why Cas stuck out in his head so much; he’d seen The Heiress when he was a teenager at the Carraway Nickelodeon and Cas made him think of it. The dark, cool, theater and the sweet-bitter taste of the black licorice he bought at the concession stand and all the mystery of polished silver vanity and what it was to be famous, to have everything handed to you. 

But Cas was hardly a celebrity; he was only new in town, but he’d done something for Dean he didn’t know he could repay him for.  He hardly knew him, he didn’t know why he was suddenly feeling so flustered.

Cas was a hard worker, and Dean figured that was what it was he admired so much. 

 “Well, take my advice: it’s better to wait than to rush. I learned that one the hard way,” Dean blurted, coming out of his reverie. Castiel blinked and tilted his head a little and Dean pushed himself back, slipping off the stool, away from the counter. Castiel caught up with him, watching as Dean dug out his wallet out again.

“I have to get on up to the house. Give the babysitter the rest of the day off, I ‘spose,” he said, trying to gloss over his strange behavior.

He fished out a few bills for the coke and Cas stood beside him, putting his hands idly in his pockets, waiting.

They left the drug store together, the bell chiming again over them, and the hot air hit them like a wall. Ladies doing their day shopping and little kids looked at them as they came out, no doubt confused as to what they were doing out of the mines at that time of day.  

“Say,” Dean said, stopping before Cas could walk away. He shifted a little on his feet. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry. I know I wasn’t as good to you as I could have been. We don’t warm up very well to outsiders in this business, but, I was wrong, and I’m sorry. You more’n proved what kind of man you are, helpin’ me today.”

He couldn’t tell what exactly the expression was on Castiel’s face but it wasn’t entirely surprise. It looked a little like relief, like a massive weight had been lifted off of him at Dean’s words.  

“You acted the way anyone would,” Cas replied after a moment of consideration, looking Dean in dead in the eye. “I don’t blame you, so no need to apologize.”

“Well, I want to,” Dean settled and Cas offered his small and awkward smile. “Just to back it up, there’s a social at the First Methodist this Saturday. I ain’t religious, but they’ll be given’ away pies and the music’s real good.”

“Are you inviting me?” Cas said shyly and Dean shrugged.

“Everybody’s invited to God’s table, ain’t they?” he joked and to his shock Cas’ eyes crinkled and he laughed full-on, shoulders shaking, grin large and teeth white and neat in his mouth.

“Yes, I believe that’s true,” Cas agreed. “Very wise of you to acknowledge,” he added, his hand coming to Dean’s shoulder in a friendly touch.

Dean felt his fingers squeeze through the fabric of his shirt and then pull away, and Dean felt the laugh come to him like something contagious. When he was done, he gave Cas a long look, content to spend a moment trying to appreciate how wrong he was, but Castiel’s features were surprisingly serious and he looked at Dean nervously.

“Did you notice anything strange today?” Castiel said and Dean’s eyebrows fell.

“You mean strange like me almost dyin’?” Dean half-laughed, and Castiel shook his head.

“No…no,” Castiel continued. “It’s just…” the hand in his pocket began to move, but he quickly stopped when he saw Dean looking at him.

“Somethin’ wrong?” Dean asked and Castiel shook his head.

“No,” he said, after a moment. “No, it’s nothing. My head, probably,” he gestured to the bandage and Dean nodded.

“Rest up, alright? Need you back tomorrow, bright and early,” he insisted and Castiel assured him he would be.

\--

When he came up to the dove gray house Daisy was grazing by the fencepost and the there was a slight ruckus of chickens when Dean came through the yard. The noise they made squawking and flapping around must have carried through the open windows because he heard a soft squeal from inside the house returning to him as he made his way.

He was halfway to the porch steps when the shadow came to the screen door and Karen Singer pushed it open.

“Who’s that! Is that your daddy?” she said to Emma, who squirmed in her arms and wailed for Dean. She shrieked and wriggled, pushing away from Karen as she walked down the steps. “Alright, alright,” the woman hushed, setting her down on the ground and Emma immediately broke into a loud shrill laugh the moment her bare feet touched the grass.

Dean dropped to a crouch there on the dirt, despite the protest of his knees, and held out his arms and Emma toddled towards him, her little body staggering and tripping in its clumsy baby way, her hands splayed wide and her face pink and glowing with happiness. She keened again, nearly tumbling over herself to get to him and Dean grinned.

“Come here mama!” he called, clapping his hands together. “Come on baby girl!”

She giggled and slowed down as she got closer, little fingers stretching for him, until she fell into him with a soft chirp. Dean picked her up and she babbled on, little hands inspecting his collar and his shoulders and her little head pressing against his neck as he bent to pick up his lunchbox with the hand not holding her.

She smelled like milk and johnson’s baby oil, and talcum powder and other  lovely things and he stood there and let himself be wrapped up in that scent before he started walking back up to the house, Emma lifting her head from his shoulder to play with the clasps on his coveralls. He was glad he and Cas had taken the time to shower before leaving; he hated kissing her and seeing her all smudged up.

“What are you doin’ home so early!” Karen said, obviously worried, as Dean came up the porch steps, offering to take his lunchbox from him and opening the door so he could step inside to the slightly cooler shade of the house. He went straight to the little sitting room and sank into one of the worn-out chairs with a light groan, head tipping back.

 He heard Karen follow him inside, coming to sit down across from him as he set Emma on his knee and bounced it.

 “Dean? They didn’t fire you did they?” she continued and Dean shook his head, smiling at Emma when she began to trill, enjoying the game they were playing. The old heavy clock on the mantle ticked in the silence and Karen leaned forward, fanning her collar in the heat and watching them. She grinned at the baby.

“Are you a happy somebody, missy? Are you pleased?” she cooed, and Emma’s laugh stuttered as she bounced. “We had a good day, didn’t we? We put up the laundry and we strung up some leather britches and did some mending, didn’t we?”

Emma craned her head back to look at Dean, his hands going to hers to keep her balanced on his knees.

“She eat alright?”

“Like a little piglet,” Karen laughed and Emma righted herself a little more with a squeak. Soon she was fussing to get down, tired of the game; she didn’t want to stay up on his lap for much longer. He patted her bottom and set her down on the floor, watching her go a few feet away to where her toys were scattered on the rug.

She picked up her rattle and shook it and cooed and then turned and showed it to Dean, shaking it again.

Dean nodded his approval and she smiled and then shook it harder, and his eyes drifted up away from her to all the little decorations in the room – his mother’s china plates on the walls and his father’s old shotgun and the needlepoints that Lydia had done herself or inherited from her family when she’d moved in after they married.

The dusty photographs, few and far-between.

He knew Karen was waiting for an explanation, but he just wanted to sit there.

“You’re awfully quiet honey,” Karen said, reaching forward to put her hand on his. Dean jerked at the movement, looking at the sturdy little woman across from him. Her sweet face was lined with concern as she looked at him, the way it always seemed to be, framed by soft strands of gray-brown hair that had come out from the clasp she kept it in. Her sleeveless dark blue dress was hanging off her shoulders and rucked up around her legs on the small sofa, and he could see where she had recently redone the hem work, and also the small run in the top of one of her stockings, but she tucked her ankles around each other, so ladylike despite it.

“Just had a bit of an accident,” he said calmly and her face went pale.

 “Lord Jesus, I hope no one was hurt,” Karen said breathlessly, hand moving away from his to touch the cross under her collar, and Dean shook his head, looking back to the baby.  

“Just a little rock fall,” Dean reassured her, and she gave him an unconvinced look. “Friend of mine got a bit cut up pullin’ me out of the way, but that’s all. They gave us the rest of the day to ‘recuperate’,” he said, mimicking Zachariah’s words from earlier.

“Sounds like a good friend,” Karen mentioned, sounding relieved jus the same, and Dean remained silent, contemplating it.

“Yes ma’am,” he said, finally, feeling his body sink into the chair even more. He was so tired.

The two adults didn’t converse much further, watching the little girl play on the floor. Emma was always content to keep to herself, sometimes proclaiming something to the little room that couldn’t be translated. Karen Singer clasped her hands on her knees, prayer like, head tilting softly to the side as Emma reacted to her play.

For nearly half a year she had come every day Dean had to work to look after Emma and Sam and the house in Lydia’s absence, accepting a meager check each week as a thank for her services. She never once complained, never asked for time off barring Sundays when she went to church.

She and Bobby hadn’t been able to have children of their own, and Dean knew that she considered looking after Emma the chance she never got. She took such care of Emma, loved her like she was her own; was there for every moment that he couldn’t be, to nurse every hurt and cough and delight in every smile.

His poor, unfortunate little girl. Already half an orphan and barely a year old.

Today she’d nearly lost her father, and Dean had to ask himself how bad would it be, really? How much would she suffer without him? He loved her so desperately, he wanted her to have everything, but she was just a baby. Not old enough to miss him, really. Even if it meant that one day she might have to go with someone else, he wouldn’t mind if it was someone like Karen. Karen would never impose that sort of idea, but Dean knew that if something ever happened to him Karen wouldn’t let Emma come to any harm, would love her so properly and fully.

It made him ache.

“Today must have scared all the words out of you,” Karen said, jolting him back into the quiet room again. She cast her sweet eyes on him and he smiled.

“Must have,” he whispered, lifting a hand to rub his face. Karen’s face mellowed to something like sorrow.

“It’s such a sin the way you boys have to make a livin’,” she murmured. “Makes you so old before you ought to be.”

“It’s not so bad,” Dean sighed. “It’s what you have to do.”

 “Where’s Sammy?” he said, because it was the first thing to come to his mind, natural and familiar.

“Fishin’ I reckon,” she said. She stood, shaking out her worn dress, and Dean stood too.

“Karen,” he tried, unsure, and she simply put her hand on his cheek.

“Don’t worry so much,” she said. “It puts years on a pretty face.” She straightened the collar of his shirt in a motherly way and then smoothed her dress, going to the front of the house to fetch her coat, and as she went to leave the room Emma stopped playing and whimpered.

“Oh, now none of that,” Karen scolded, pausing in the doorway as she buttoned her coat. “You have your daddy all to yourself! No crocodile tears! Nana will be back tomorrow.”

Emma made a little cry and Dean bent to pick her up and she quieted, busy with the clasps on his coveralls again. He followed Karen to the front of the house, watching her collect her pocketbook.

“You sure you don’t want me to drive you?” he asked, and she shook her head at him.

“Dean Winchester I’m only right down the road! 'Sides, walk will do me good,” she went to him to take Emma’s face in her hands and kiss it. “Oh, I’ll miss you! You go down nice and easy for your daddy now, alright. He’s had a hard day.”

Emma held her fingers and then let them go.

“Oh – I almost forgot!” Karen said, halfway out the door. She stood there in the afternoon sun, soft featured and glowing, like an old painting – the sort that companies put on postcards. “I was makin’ up Sam’s bed this morning and I think one of the floorboards in his room is rotted!”

“Rotted?” Dean said, confused. Karen nodded.

“Strangest thing! That or it’s loose…nearly broke my ankle walking over it!” she said and Dean tried to think of why that might have been.

“Well I’ll look into it for you, don’t you worry,” he said and she grinned. "And I'll remind Sam he should be makin' his own bed." 

“I know you will!” she laughed, waving. “Oh, and don't give him any trouble. He's just bein' a boy! I’ll be by tomorrow morning same time as always!” she called, and Dean waved back.

Emma watched her go and Dean raised her hand with his own to wave, but she pulled it back against her with a snap of movement.

She still hadn’t learned to wave goodbye.

* * *

 

Dean had the radio going when Sam came into the house. It wasn’t late enough to be evening, but that dense, hot, in-between time when everything seemed a fraction wilder than it had been the hour before.

“Dean?” came Sam’s unsure voice and Dean turned the radio down a little.

“Yeah,” he called, listening to Sam’s footsteps coming up from the rear of the house. “I got supper on, you might as well stop and wash,” he added loudly, turning his head a little towards the back of his chair. Sam rounded the corner into the living room and Dean glanced up at him, the newspaper he had been reading draped limply across his lap.

“You not hear me? I said wash up,” he said and his little brother sighed. “Wake up the baby and take her too.” He gestured across from him and then rustled the newspapers back into place.

Sam’s eyes strayed to Emma where she was asleep on the sofa, little fat arms tucked under her chest.

“Why are you home so early?” he said, and Dean didn’t bother to look up, just stretched his leg out a little.

“I’ll tell you over supper.”

“Did you get fired?” Sam hurried, and Dean looked wearily up at him.

“Wake up the baby, please,” Dean pleaded, going back to his paper.

“You know you ain’t supposed to let her sleep this late,” Sam murmured, letting Dean change the subject for now. He bent down to lift her up. She blinked blearily and mewled, kicking against him, unhappy with being disturbed. “She ain’t ever gonna go down,” Sam grunted, adjusting her.

“She ain’t been a sleep but a minute,” Dean yawned. “And don’t you use too hot water!” he added as Sam went back behind him to the washroom, toting Emma in his arms.

“You wanna do this yourself?” Sam said, turning around to grind his eyes against the back of his brother’s sitting chair. Emma moaned and squirmed, and his arms tightened around her middle to keep her from falling, and Dean didn’t say anything, just turned the page of his newspaper.

“Don’t make me ask you four more times,” Dean sighed, and Sam watched Dean’s hand come up to his temple. “Please, Sam.”

Sam figured he had one of his headaches again and closed his mouth. He really wasn’t in any position to argue, anyway. He knew he was supposed to be home earlier, not that Dean usually knew, but he’d been fooling around in the thickets, traipsing the old trails, thinking.

Emma sucked on her fingers and he set her up on the counter of the little washroom, closing the door behind him. Her eyes were still sleep heavy and she swayed a little from side to side, peering from behind her long pale lashes as he started to run warm water and pulled the comb and cloth from the medicine cabinet.

“Come on, wake up,” he said and Emma sighed in a grown up sort of way that made him smile. She let him wash her little sticky hands and rub the towel over her face and comb her hair a little more into place. Her eyes never left his as he worked, straightening her little romper and her socks and buttoning the top buttons on her collar. He didn’t know why anybody bothered with that sort of thing – babies just went and mussed themselves up the minute you were finished.

“Ah,” she said, loudly, and Sam leaned in close to her, folding his arms on the counter with a soft huff. She tugged on a long strand of his hair and he knocked his forehead into hers, watching her go cross-eyed for a moment when she focused on him.

“Can I tell you a secret, chicken?” he whispered and she hummed and twittered, busy examining his face. “You have to promise not to tell anybody.”

She covered his eyes with her hands and he shook them off, only to have her do the same thing again.

“Boo!” she giggled, clearly ignoring his attempts to confide in her. “Boo! Boo!”

“Listen, chicken, I’m tryin’ to tell you somethin’,” he said, taking hold of her tiny hands with his big ones. She blinked at him, little mouth half open.

“I think I’m in love,” Sam hushed, feeling embarrassed by the emotion. “Today, when I was a’walkin’, all I could think about was Jessica. And last night I couldn’t sleep because I was thinkin’ about her then, too.” He paused, pulling away to start washing his own hands, remembering why he was in the washroom to begin with. Dirt ran off of his hands and stuck to the sink basin before it swirled away down the drain; mud from the creek beds and dirt from tree branches he had been snapping while he walked and thought and walked some more.

“I thought, maybe I oughta get her somethin’ real nice. I could just keep workin’ to make up the difference! So it ain’t too bad. Might could get her somethin’ real pretty. Like a necklace. I don’t know when her birthday is, but maybe that could make up for the ones I missed, you know?”

Emma seemed to understand, patting Sam’s head when he came back to slump further against the counter.

“You have to promise to keep this real secret too, alright chicken?” he whispered. “But she kissed me. She did. We was lyin’ on the floor in her bedroom. Mrs. Moore had gone out to do shoppin’, and Mr. Moore was at his practice, and she asked me to come upstairs after I was done doin’ the grass. She has a record player, a real nice one. It’s real cherry wood and she keeps it in her bedroom.  She’s got posters of rock singers tacked on her walls and she asked me if I had ever heard of Al Green, and I said no, I ain’t. He’s a real good singer. If I can get a record player I’m gonna get one of his records.”

It felt like a mirage, really. The soft wobble of the record going around and the two of them sitting on her braided rug, pretending that they didn’t like each other, that the way their shoulders were brushing didn’t mean anything to either of them.

“Are you going to mine coal someday?” she’d asked, cross-legged, running her hands over the bumps in the carpet.

“Probably,” Sam said. He liked the song that was playing. Al Green – his voice was smooth, like satin, and his picture on the record made him look like he could get any girl he wanted while still being nice about it. Like they all came to him because they wanted, not because he talked big.

"I think it's interesting," she continued. "You know?"

"I guess," Sam answered. He was trying to make himself smaller so he wouldn't make a mess in the room. He had never been in a girl's room before. Emma had her nursery, but that didn't count. It wasn't like Jessica's - Jessica's had real wallpaper and carpet and a double bed and things all over the walls, posters and notes and drawings and postcards and photographs. 

He felt her look sideways at him. 

"Did you know that I go to school in Louisville?" she said, and Sam turned his head to her. 

"What's it like?" 

She laughed and rubbed at an invisible spot on her knee. 

"It's nice. I have a lot of friends. But I have to wear a uniform all the time, because it's Catholic school." She shrugged. "Daddy doesn't like the schools here, he says the one I go to is better, so I'm there most of the time, and then I come back for summer." 

"I bet it is better," Sam murmured, looking at the way her hair draped over the side of her face. She moved it self-conciously.

"You know, I've never been to the fair," she blurted lifting her head, face pink. 

"It's ok," he said, and she chewed her lip and nodded. 

"I've never been," she repeated. "You know - I haven't. I don't know anybody here so I don't - I don't go. Have you been?"

"Yes'm." 

He watched her throat bob, like she was about to cry, but her eyes didn't look like she was. She just looked upset and it confused him a lot. She worried her knee more, blushing. 

"It's coming up soon, I read that in the paper," she went on, sitting up a little straighter, moving her shoulders, like she was just mentioning it.

"Do you want me to take you?" he asked, and her eyes shot up to him and then went right back to her knee. 

"You don't have to!" she said, a little loudly. "I'm sure you've been plenty of times, you don't have to go with me - "

"I don't mind," Sam assured, swallowing. "You sure you want to go with someone like me, though?" he said, lower, and she stared at him in honest confusion. 

"Why wouldn't I want to go with you?" her little pug nose wrinkling. He laughed at her, and moved his hands a little, shaking his head. "Sam?"

"Because you're," he gestured to her vaguely.

"I'm what?" she frowned.

"You're - well, you're high class," he said. Her face suddenly became very serious, and Sam had to try very hard not to look away in shame. 

It was clear that she hadn't thought of that up to this point. She didn't see the way people looked at him sometimes when he came down to Carraway, the way they had looked at him in school with his patched coat and hand-me-down shoes. She was at school, in Louisville, with a nice uniform. He shouldn't have been there at all. What would her parents think? 

"I should go," he said, and her hand flew out to grab him. 

"Don't," she said. "Please don't."

He didn't know what to say; he was so happy she'd told him not to but he had to wonder if it was really alright. 

"You just want me here because you're lonely," he said, trying his best to be unkind, and she shook her head. 

"No, no - no. Sam,  _no,_ " she interupted and he opened his mouth to speak and she kissed him. 

She pulled back and he stared at her. She took a breath. 

"Do you like this record?" she asked, and Sam nodded. "It's my favorite," she said. 

"It's good," he stuttered. Her eyes were wide and emotional and he didn't know what the hell he was supposed to do with his hands. He felt like all of his insides were in one big corkscrew. She'd kissed him, just like that. Not an ounce of pretext about it. 

"Jess," he said and she stiffened, and he licked his lips, afraid. "I uh -" 

"I'm sorry," she whispered, leaning back. "I'm so sorry - I shouldn't have -"

"If you do that again I might mess up your hair," he said and he saw the moment his words reached her and she covered her face with her hands. 

"Sam," she'd laughed. "Sam, I don't care about that at all." 

Presently, Emma fisted her hand into his hair and tugged and Sam hissed.

“Ouch, chicken! That smarts!” he barked, wrestling out of her grip.

Emma clapped her hands and giggled.

\--

Sam knew Dean must have had a lot on his mind because he’d been cooking like he meant to feed an army. He fried pork chops and made a mess of okra and tomatoes and a whole pan of cornbread, even though there was only the three of them to eat it, and Emma hardly counted.

Still, Sam couldn’t complain. It had been ages since Dean had really cooked, and there was something about Dean’s food that just seemed better than anyone else’s.

“Found a patch of ramps today,” Sam said, crumbling cornbread into a tall glass and drenching it with milk, watching Dean out of the corner of his eye.

“Did you?” Dean said, fixing his plate and coming to the table. He didn’t bend over his food like he normally did, leaning back in his chair to push it around a little, like he didn’t know what to do with it.

 Emma had managed to get applesauce all over her face and was chewing thoughtfully on a bit of okra. Dean looked at the food on her little warming plate and then pulled it towards him, cutting her meat into smaller pieces while she watched and squeaked a little, reaching for more.

“I could go back up and pick ‘em if you want,” Sam continued, fiddling with his fork, and Dean nodded, still cutting.

“Hmm,” he hummed, only half listening. “There you go baby doll,” he murmured, pushing Emma’s food back towards her. “You eat that all up, now.”

Her foot thumped against her chair leg happily.

“You know them old trails are still clear. Somebody’s been cuttin’ all the trees back,” Sam added, watching his brother’s face. “I could show you. Sometime. Maybe we could take Emma down there once she’s big enough. You can still see the valley real good in some places, and that one pine still got our initials in it. I think it’s taller than it was.” Sam speared a piece of tomato with his fork and brought it to his mouth. It was good.

Dean frowned, finally leaning forward to start eating his own food.  
  
“Keep outta there, alright? Nothin’ but bootleggin’ goin’ on out there,” he said, a harsh worry in his eyes. “You wanderin’ around back there ain’t gonna come to any good.”

Sam shrugged.

“I didn’t see anybody.”

“Course you’re not gonna _see_ anyone, Sam,” Dean said frankly, looking up at him. “They don’t _want_ you to see anyone.”

“I’d probably just run into Benny,” Sam mumbled. “He ain’t gonna do nothin’ to me.”

“That’s Benny’s business,” Dean answered, heaping food onto his fork.

Sam adjusted his knife in his fingers.

“You didn’t really get fired, did you?” Sam said softly. Dean shook his head and Sam felt instant relief.

“Just a little bit of rock fall,” Dean explained. “Shook me up somethin’ terrible but nothing to worry about.”

Sam’s mouth twitched with something he wanted to say, but he decided against it. Of course it was something to worry about – of course it was…

“Well, what happened?” Sam prompted.

“Don’t quite know,” Dean shrugged. “Was settin’ pins and,” he swallowed a bite of food, “for I know it I’m sideways on the ground. Cas Novak yanked me right out from under it.”

His voice trailed off and Sam stared at him, trying to imagine it.

“Cas Novak’s that operator you’re always goin’ on about,” Sam said, looking back down at his plate. He wasn’t so hungry anymore. “I thought you didn’t like him.”

“He’s a good man,” Dean replied. “Just needed a chance to show it, I guess.”

Dean took a long drink of milk.

“I invited him to the Methodist social,” he said after a moment, and Sam’s ears pricked.  
  
“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I figure he’ll come too. Might could use some company. He lives down by the old mill. Bum Fuck Egypt, if you ask me.”

“They didn’t put him up in town?”  
  
“I asked him the same thing. Said his daddy or his daddy’s daddy, can’t remember which, had property up there.”

Sam'd heard Dean talking recently about Castiel, but not like this. Not like he knew him, or was interested in who lived back farther in the hills, somewhere on the edges of town in a little left-behind house.  

Till now, all Sam knew was what he heard Dean and Victor and Benny or Bobby say over their cardgames. A few words exchanged, a few lofty appraisals of his work and murmurs over his character. 

From what Sam had gleaned he didn't come down from where he lived very often. Suddenly, he was saving Dean's life, and Dean wasn't so harsh when he talked about him. Sam was grateful, understandably, but it wasn't like his brother to take so easily to someone he didn't know or bend his opininon. 

He wondered what it was about the man that was making Dean accept him into the fold. 

Sam pecked at his food. The realization of what had happened to Dean dumped over him like cold water and he felt sick. 

If Castiel Novak hadn't been there, Dean would have been dead. It seized his insides and made his mouth dry. He'd spent all day long worrying about a kiss, and Dean had nearly died - and Sam felt torn to pieces because it could have been  _him_. He already felt crushed by it, already felt suffocated, and Dean acted like it was nothing. 

Maybe Dean didn't see the evidence of it, the slow unfurling of it all, the way it was all going to rot. He didn’t walk past the skeletal figures of those tired old folks rocking on their porches day after day, in the restless afternoons when Sam didn't know what to do with himself. Dean didn’t see them worrying and wringing their hands in doorways like gnats at the corner of an eye; shrunken mouths muttering about mines, about things that didn’t make sense, about the restless prosperity of the young with their flimsy paper money and machinery you had to tame, only to take it to the rock.

Sam wondered what it would feel like to watch them sheer at the mountain, to slowly grind her hollow with their new machines and new operators that clawed and bit little by little. 

Sam couldn't fathom it - their agony - now that their knees had given out and they sat wasting in their straight backed chairs too weak to walk, lungs tarred so black they couldn’t go more than a few steps. In their day, they said, they blasted their way into the rock. Held it up with log posts, didn’t drive pins into her soft belly left to set for eternities.

An eye for an eye, they whisper in the steaming heat of midafternoon holed up on their porches, purposelsess; all that sympathy for the blue shale and gray slate that stole their legs and hands and lives. 

Sam always thought late at night when he heard Dean pacing the floor at night, saw him mutely eating his dinner, how stagnant it was. All of them caught in a basin of brackish standing water between the hills.

What did it even mean when they tried to save each other?

“Dean?” Sam said out of nowhere, and Dean hummed.  “I was thinkin’ maybe we could go fishin’ together. ‘Fore it gets too cold? We could get Jo to watch the baby.  I was down there today and there are some good spots. All our old ones is still there.”

“I don’t know, Sammy,” Dean breathed. “Maybe if we get that corn up, alright?”

“Sure,” Sam said.

He knew it meant no.

“Eat,” Dean commanded, pointing at his full plate.

Sam did.

“You ever heard of Al Green?” Sam said, once he had finished enough of his okra to keep Dean from bothering him some more.

Dean shook his head.

"Who's he?"

"A singer."

"He any good?"

Sam smiled half-heartedly at his plate, moving a little bit of his food around, shaping it into a pile.

“He’s real good,” Sam finished.


	3. Chapter 3

The rain began on Thursday, the last day before they broke out from under the holler and the last shift between Dean and his break. It had been two long, tiring weeks, and it showed on them - all of them were wearied by the stress, and the rain seemed to dampen them even more.  

"They'll keep an eye on it," Victor said as they readied themselves for the day in the locker room. "Pain in the ass, though," he mumbled afterwards, doing up his belt. 

Dean and Benny and Cas were all situated on the long bench running down the center. Benny was counting cash, and Dean was tucking his pant legs into his boots, bent slightly over to adjust the laces and make sure they were extra tight, preventing the chance of any water getting into them. 

He wasn't going to be upset by it. There were procedures, he knew. Everything would be fine. They'd work and it'd be fine. 

He put his hands on his thighs and looked around, eyes falling on a the little plasticine roll of tape near Cas' body on the bench. 

"Pass me that tape," he said, and Cas did as he was told, reaching around Benny to hand it to him. Dean thumbed at the seam and pulled a long strip off, laying it over the place his boot met his pants, taping it tightly together to seal it up. Benny got up to join Victor, done dressing, leaving Dean and Cas alone in the small room. An unlit cigarette hung out of Cas' mouth as he ruffled through what appeared to be a letter, tucking one page behind the other. 

"What's that?" Dean asked, moving to tape up his other boot. 

"A letter from Jakab. I had forgotten to read it yesterday," Cas said, taking the cigarette from his lips and holding it between his fingers. "My mother is dying." 

"Awful sorry to hear that," Dean said, tearing the tape smoothly and patting the edge down. 

"It's alright," Cas said simply, folding the letter up and putting it away. "It's better that she does it while I'm away."

"You don't get along?" Dean said, watching Cas stand and go to his locker, tucking the letter inside and pulling his jacket out to put it on. 

"No, it's just better," Cas sighed, giving him a smile. "She feels she has to take care of everyone, and this way she doesn't have to. It will give her some peace." 

Dean nodded, and Cas dug in his pocket, looking for his lighter. Not finding it in his jacket, he searched in his pants and pulled out his handkerchief instead, balled up. 

He stared at it, pulling the cigarette out of his mouth and slipping it behind his ear. 

"You got somethin'?" he asked, curious, and Cas' fingers closed a little around it. He lifted his face to Dean, searching his eyes. 

"If I told you something, would you believe me? Even if it seemed like it couldn't be true?"

Dean's mouth fell into a confused smile, expression light to counter Cas' serious one. 

"Depends on what it is," he laughed, and Cas took a breath, looking back to the little thing in his hand.

"The day of the accident, do you remember when I said that something was caught in the sweeper?" 

"Yes," Dean said, brow furrowing. Castiel beckoned Dean over and Dean came closer, peering down with Cas at the little bundle of handkerchief. Cas hadn't yet put his helmet on, and Dean glanced at his dark hair - he could see where the spiral of it started, a large cowlick on the back, and the humidity made it fall limply over his forehead. His eyes traced down the bridge of Cas' nose to the palm of his hand, and he saw that Cas had dug whatever it was he was hiding out of the fabric to reveal it to Dean.

"I found this," he said lowly. "It was in the sweeper." 

Dean didn't know what he had been expecting, but it wasn't what he saw. 

"How?" he said, grabbing Cas' wrist to pull it closer. He looked up at Cas' face and then back to the thing. 

"I don't know," Cas replied, shaking his head in dismay. "I've tried to think, but it doesn't make sense - how does someone lose their eye and not notice?"

Dean tried not to look at it - the little glass eye nested in Cas' hand. It was old, a jaundiced yellow, and spiderwebbed by thin cracks all across its dull surface. The small dark pupil stared up at them in an unsettling, displaced way, surrounded by a milky blue painted iris. He rejected it immediatly, and every impulse told him to push Cas away, to get it away from him, but he couldn't. He was too concerned with it, how it had gotten there. 

Instinctively, he didn't want to believe it. Cas was just making it up - but he couldn't reconcile it. Cas had only ever been too honest with all of them. He was exactly what he made himself out to be, a conundrum within itself, but he didn't  _lie_. 

"You found this in the sweep?" Dean said and Cas remained silent, still staring at the thing. 

"Do you feel it?" he asked, and Dean looked up at him. Cas' eyes were trained on it, and he moved it a little in his hand, almost wincing. "It gives me a terrible feeling," he whispered, and his eyes darkened, clouded and Dean remembered his hand was still on Cas' wrist and released it. 

"It's probably just someone trying to scare you," Dean said quickly, not letting himself be carried away by any wild thought. He had too much on his mind already, with the rain. The rain that drudged up older things in Dean than Cas. "Somebody is tryin' to spook you, that's all. You're doin' a dead man's job, and after Ronnie made such a scene - they're just tryin' to get in your head," Dean added and Cas clumisly folded the eye back into the handkerchief and slipped it back in his pocket. His face had gone back to its usual self, but now it seemed a little defeated. 

"I figured it could be that," he sighed, brushing his hair back from his forehead. 

"That don't make it right," Dean hurried to say, putting his hand up on Cas' shoulder and squeezing. "If someone is out for you, we'll hear about it one way or another. Don't worry," he reassured, and Cas gave him an appreciative smile, eyes trusting. 

* * *

It rained. 

They worked, and bitched, and it rained.

The belt malfunctioned - the night shift had put the fastenings on backwards and had to be realigned.  

At noon the conveyor jammed on the miner and Cas spent an hour trying to coax it back into running, frustrated and tired by the end of it and cursing in what sounded like four different languages at any given time, a mishmash of Hungarian and English.

Water gathered at their ankles, it dripped down from the ceiling, rain seeping into the rock, and at 3:00 the pumps gave out and water backed up so fast they were immediatly supposed to evacuate. 

Dean helped Cas to gather equipment, shouting orders to the helpers while Bobby worked the front of the mine. He turned over his shoulder to see Cas pull his hand away from where he had been tinkering with the miner still and stare blankly at it, a grotesque expression on his face; Dean immediatly recognized it as terror.

Dean glanced at it, and there was a slickness to his hand and scarlet, like it was covered in blood, and he nearly dropped everything to see what was the matter, but then he realized that the light above them was blinking hazard red. 

It had only been a shadow.

 

* * *

Outside the rain had become a downpour, and the wind rushed over the yard, causing them all to scatter to whatever shelter they could. 

"Cain't do a thing about it," Bobby explained, shouting over the gale. "ETA on the pumps is up to five hours!" 

"Any of you on the other side of the Creek best be careful! Bridge is out by the confluence; water's too high to cross!" 

Dean looked at Cas and Cas looked back at him and then away. 

"Victor, I'm gonna go home with you and stay with Rufus tonight - Dean, you tell Karen I'll be home when I can." 

Dean nodded, and they all shielded themselves from the sharp bite of sudden wind and rain, the rest all turning away, retreating homeward. Castiel stood, mud splattered up to his shins from the mess the yard had become, and Dean grabbed his coat and tugged. 

"I ain't lettin' you go home on your own - don't even think about it!" he yelled, pulling Cas with him towards the locker room so they could get their things. 

"You don't have to," Cas said, once they were inside, and Dean gave him a long look. 

"I do," he said, and Cas blew air out of his nose, and went about getting his things. It was useless to argue. 

Together they trudged back into the storm. Garth ran past them, shouting at Ash to get him some tool, fighting with a tarp as he went, nearly tripping over it in his haste, and Dean and Cas pulled their collars tighter around them. 

Dean's old Carhartt was good for keeping his clothes dry underneath, but it was heavy with water on his aching shoulders and his boots were already starting to get heavy with mud and water. Cas fared no better - his barn jacket was soaked and his shirt was plastered to his chest under it, but there was no time to stop; Bobby had already heard over the radio it wasn't going to be letting up any time soon. 

They were all wet and pissed - no work meant no pay.

Benny had bolted as soon as he could to check on one of his stills, and Victor had only lingered because Bobby had more ends to tie up before they could leave, and Dean and Cas were some of the last to start going down the hillside, watching as men covered the hopper cars with canvas, struggling to tie them down in the wind. 

It was only natural that Dean and Cas gravitated closer, mutually shielding each other from the wind. 

Birdsfoot was deserted - the shop windows of Main Street were closed, the shades drawn down, and everyone had retreated into their homes to hold out against the rain. It gave the senese that Dean and Cas were the only two left in the lonely world, drifting like ghosts between the rows of identical houses that seemed to stretch on forever, edges dissolving into the fog and steam from the rain. 

Bobby had been right to warn them; the creek was swelling fast in its channel. The ferry was out, pulled up on the other side of the bank, far away from the water, long furrows in the dirt where it had been hauled up the ramped hillside. That left only the swing bridge as their option, and they both were less than excited about it, but they had to get home somehow. 

It wasn't the bridge that bothered Dean the most. It bothered him because it was old, because the ropes groaned with every step they took on the water-logged boards that felt soft and unnatural under their heels. It swung in the wind, and he had to force himself along, trying to maintain his balance and go slow so it wouldn't wag too much in the gale. Behind him Cas' weight leaned from side to side, unused to it, but Dean had walked this bridge hundreds of times. It had seen storms just as bad as this one, storms worse than this one, and it hadn't snapped. Why would it snap today? 

But underneath, below, the water churned. It roiled and eddied in murky brown from all the runoff. He could see the slick bodies of fish rushing by, black and swept away by the current and tree branches snagged on either side of the channel, like dead hands reaching up for help and safety. 

He hadn't realized he'd stopped, but the sound of it was rising up into his ears and he had froze, Cas bumping awkwardly against him an forcing him to move again. They stood at the other end of the bridge, watching it sway, wondering how in the world they had crossed it. 

"Your house is on a hill?" Cas said, and he was able to speak a little more like normal. They were right on the cusp of the woodlands, and the trees gave the impression taht it wasn't as bad as it was, shiedling them from the torrent. 

Dean told him it was, that there was no chance for the flood to reach them. They didn't linger by the Creek. 

Back in the woods it was dark and everything was stirred and unsettled. Fireflies blinked, rising up from what looked like nowhere, like whisps.

A red fox tore across the path, scattering wet earth and water, shuddering through the underbrush, and into the dense fog, and Dean instinctively put his arm out, barring Cas from going any further when it appeared. Then it was gone, yellow eyes just two spectral impressions against the gloom.

The trees groaned with the wind, branches scraping, and the pines creaked and swayed, their tops infinite and bleeding together in the mist, the forest spreading out into the valley, shifting between the low clouds. Dean swore he could feel their roots snaking up, writhing under the topsoil to reach more water, edging too close - as if they'd snare one of them by mistake. 

Birds beat their wet feathers in the branches, their calls distorted by the wet, close air - a screech owl called, as though night had fallen unexpectedly and without warning. 

They could feel the wetness of their clothes and the squelch of their boots and the pant of their breaths, and the walk seemed endless and alien and uncomfortable. 

Like they were unwanted - humans had no place in the rain. They were not made to walk in it, naked and unprotected. 

Soon, they broke through the backwoods and there was the dove gray house, emerging from the smoke of the hills, with windows blazing orange light and all else lost behind, erased. 

\--

Karen was relieved to know that Bobby was going to be alright, and Dean insisted she go home the minute he got in the door. Any longer and the walk would be far worse and she'd agreed. She need to make sure nothing had come through the roof, either, and had thanked him with a kiss on the cheek and made him swear to take care of himself and get out of his clothes as soon as possible, before he caught any epizooticks. 

He hung his wet clothes off of the porch, watching the rain come down and beat the shutters against the house. He'd shown Cas straight to the washroom and let him have the hot water, and when he went back into the hallway to his bedroom he could see steam rising from the crack under the door. Sam was in the living room with Emma, nose-deep in a book, head heavy on his fist while Emma played on the rug. 

When Dean came into the living room he looked up and then back to his book, moving over on the couch so he could have room if he wanted, but Dean dropped into his chair again. 

"That Cas in there?" Sam said, curious, letting his book fall closed on his lap. Dean massaged his face and shook his hair out - he'd need a bath. The coal dust had sort of mixed with the rainwater and dried on the sides of his face and neck, and it itched. 

"The bridge he takes is out, so I made him come back with me," Dean said. "We'll put him up on the couch." 

Sam nodded. 

"Mine flood?" he went on to ask, and Dean nodded. 

"There any coffee on?" he said. Sam said there was and got up to get some.

"Everly time I think it's goin' somewhere down there it all falls to shit. Pumps just turned off on us," Dean continued, rubbing his temple. A little coffee would clear his headache. "Gonna take me another month to make a payment, I swear," he grumbled. 

"Forecast says it's supposed to rain for three more days," Sam said from the kitchen, and he looked up when he heard the washroom door open. The dark haired man emerged, wearing some of Dean's old clothes, rubbing his face and hair with a towel, coughing lightly. 

"Gonna have to build a fuckin' ark," Dean rumbled, lighting a cigarette. He made sure to say it softly so Emma wouldn't hear. 

Sam looked back to the coffee and reached up to get an extra cup for Cas.

"Cas want coffee?" he asked. 

"Cas, how do you take it?" Dean called, having heard the door shove open and Cas' trailing footsteps into the room. Cas came to a stop beside Dean's chair, his towel draped around his neck, looking into the kitchen where he assumed Sam to be.

"Milk, please," he said. "And as much sugar as you can afford me," he added. His eyes wandered around the room and fell on Emma who had turned around and was looking at him. He'd been so wet and cold when he came in he hadn't even noticed her the first time, just let Dean push him blindly into the bathroom to peel off his clothes and warm up. 

Now he saw her, and her face was warmed by the firelight coming from the hearth, flickering over her features. He went to the sofa and sat down, trying not to disturb the coffee table or many of the pillows or the neglected book balanced face down on one of the arms. 

Emma had pulled herself up and tottered over to Dean's knees and he'd reached down to pick her up and set her on his lap, stubbing his cigarette out in a glass ashtray on the endtable beside him. She hid her face shyly in his chest and he laughed. 

"What all has gotten into you?" he murmured, kissing her face and she mumbled something, rubbing her nose into his sleeve. "It's just Cas," he said, and she huffed, Dean staring up over the top of her head to meet Cas' eyes. 

"She's charming, I promise," he said and Castiel nodded in understanding.

"She's just a baby, and I don't belong here," he said, and Emma burrowed deeper into Dean's shoulder, fingers slipping into her mouth. 

Sam appeared with coffee before Dean could respond, setting it down for them and falling into his side of the couch, earning him a steely eye from Dean. 

"Sorry," he muttered, and Dean lifted his eyebrows. 

"It's nice to meet you, Sam," Cas said and Sam looked at the operator he'd heard so much about. He was simultaneously exactly what Sam had pictured him to be and not at all, soft-eyed and tired from the day, but still holding some kind of stiff posture there on the sofa. There was something about his face that Sam knew was different, but couldn't decipher - something about how calm it was, despite all the angles to it. 

"You too," Sam said and Castiel appeared to relax, glad to have garnered Sam's approval. 

Dean smiled, pleased.

* * *

It was well into night, and they had moved to the eating table. The empty plates of Dean's make-shift supper were pushed aside and he held Emma on his lap, consulting her about the fold of cards in his hand.

"Your brother is beating me blind," Cas sighed in defeat, putting his hand down on the table. Emma plucked a card from Dean's fingers and he wrestled it away from her, tucking it back in - it was no use. Sam had still won. 

"Both of us," Dean said, throwing his down too, Sam smiling triumphantly and pulling the small pile of pennies towards him. Dean should have warned Cas what a card shark Sam was. 

They'd settled into friendly conversation, letting the rain beat down on the house after they'd eaten, and then Sam had snuck out the cards and Dean knew there was no point in saying no, even if Sam's win was a given. Sam liked to show off, and Dean was willing to let him.

Emma played with the cards that Dean had put down, rambling on in her baby language and holding the cards out for Sam and Cas to take in turn, both of them saying thank you and taking them, of course. 

"Time is it?" Sam asked, yawning, and Dean leaned back, squinting at the clock on the mantle. 

"Half past eight," he said, and he looked down at Emma. "You should have been in bed," he said and Emma huffed. 

"I'll take her. She don't need a bath," Sam said, standing up and piling his cards messily. 

"You tired?" Dean said, brow furrowing as he looked at his little brother with concern. 

"It's the rain," Sam shrugged. "Makes me sleepy." 

Dean nodded and scooted back so he could pass Emma off to him.

"Goodnight string bean," Dean said as he kissed her all over and kissed her hands and let her go off with Sam, to the back of the house. 

They were gone, and it was just Cas and him left there, and Dean stood, collecting dishes, waving Cas to sit back down when he started to get up. 

"I'm just puttin' em over here," he laughed, carrying them to the sink. He heard Sam's bedroom door close - Emma must have fallen right to sleep. She did that sometimes. Went out like a light the minute you laid her down. 

He was glad; when she couldn't sleep he always worried. 

He poured more coffee into his glass and went back to the table to find Cas stacking and shuffling the cards again. 

"You know how to play war?" he asked, glancing up through his lashes. Dean nodded, pulling his cigarettes out and lighting one now that the baby was gone. Cas dealt them quickly and they got to playing, one after the other, automatic. 

"Thank you for letting me stay here," Cas said, not looking up, and Dean puffed on his smoke. "I'd been wanting to see where you lived." 

"Creep," Dean laughed, and Cas smiled at his cards, not saying anything. 

They tied and put down their three cards, one after the other, and Cas won, sweeping the cards towards him and aside. 

"I asked Victor what happened to your wife," Cas said, out of nowhere. Like he had been trying to find a way to say it for some time. 

Dean paused, hesitated, put his card down.

He won, Cas won. Another tie. 

"After we spoke. After the accident," Cas said, looking at him plainly. Dean's face was sullen in the dim overhead light. Afraid. Embarrassed. 

"And?" Dean said, trying to keep his voice catching. 

Win, win, loss, tie, win.

They re-gathered the cards. Shuffled. Cas dealt. 

"He told me if I wanted to know that I should ask you," Cas replied. "I didn't know how. I didn't think you would tell me." 

"And now you think I will?" Dean said, loudly, on the tipping point of anger. Clearly uncomfortable. He had forgone his cards, left them messily on the table, and Castiel didn't say anything. "What business is it of yours to know about Lydia?" Dean continued, and Cas' stare didn't waver, but stayed fixed on Dean. It made him want to hide. 

"I think if he had known what happened to her, he would have told me," Cas said. "Because he would have wanted to protect you from me asking. He cares for you a lot." 

Dean faltered. 

"He wouldn't -" 

"Have you told anyone what happened to her?" Cas said, looking back to his cards and putting one down. He pushed the cards to Dean, indicating he had won. 

Dean stared at them, cigarette dangling, gathering ash. 

"What are you trying to do?" he whispered. 

"I'm trying to understand why anyone would leave you," Cas said, and his voice was a tamed sort of anger all its own, low and dangerous. "I don't understand that. Because you're a good man."

Dean watched as he took his winning pile and made it into a neat stack. His throat felt thick, and he remembered the water rising under the bridge; he could hear it now, in the back of his head. 

"She didn't - she didn't leave me," Dean said, not believing that he was actually saying the words. "She -" he stopped himself, closed his mouth, looked away, out the gray window. He could see nothing. Not even indications of what was out there, even though he knew there was plenty. Hills and the shed, the coop, the fence, the trees. All of it was gone, evaporated. 

He swallowed. 

"She didn't want to marry me," Dean said. "I told myself it would be alright, that we were young. We'd grow into it. She'd grow into it. It made sense to marry her. Her parents wanted us to. Everybody told us we were in love - but," he hesitated. "I knew it wasn't right," he whispered.

"We thought we'd have a baby, try and mend it, give us a reason to stay together, but Emma didn't eat easily. She had colic real bad - and Lydia. Lyddie didn't know how to deal with her," Dean said.

He forced himself to say it. "She tried to kill her. Twice."

He curled his fingers into a loose fist on the table, clenching and then releasing it. 

"The first time I caught her mixin' things into her formula. Bleach, and things. I took her to the hospital and she came back and I thought it was alright for a while. But I should have known she wasn't. She wasn't - she was just as bad. She was worse, but I wanted it to be alright. I wanted it to be alright so badly I didn't want to see it. One night I was lyin' in bed and I heard her givin' Emma a bath and Emma was crying and carrying on and fussing, and all of a sudden it stopped, and I went in and she was holdin' her down, you know?" He looked at Cas. "She was tryin' to drown her. She didn't even look like Lydia she looked - she looked so terrified. She had climbed into the tub in her shoes and was holding her so hard, and she'd sunk her under the water - I didn't know what to do, I just reached down and pulled her out -" 

"When I asked her why, she told me so that Emma was sick. She said she was sick, that she couldn't get better. She had somethin' bad in her, like a monster or somethin'. The doctors been tellin' me it's all in her head, that she has postpartum depression. Makes women want to kill their babies because they're inbalanced. They make up things to justify it to themselves, but she was so terrifed. She was so terrified of me. She wasn't makin' that up."

"Have you seen her since then?" Cas asked, and Dean had nearly forgotten he was there. He wiped his cheeks, shook his head. 

"They released her to her sister up in Oregon. They told me it would be better not to see her. She could go back to how she was."

"Dean -" Cas started to say, but Dean didn't know how to stop.

"I think it was me, Cas," Dean said. "She thought Emma was sick because she was part of me. Everytime she looked at her, she knew where she'd came from. My blood in her. Makin' her sick." He put his hand over his mouth. 

"You aren't poison," Cas said. "You are so far from that." 

"Then why did she do it?" Dean asked. "Why did she try -," his voice choked. "Why did she try to kill my little girl? Who would hurt her? Who would hurt my little girl? She ain't never done anythin' to anyone. She couldn't. Why not me? Why didn't she hurt me?"

Dean coughed, and wiped his eyes. 

"She did," Cas said. "But that doesn't mean you deserve it."

"I ain't anything," Dean said, voice shaking. "I ain't anything." 

"Don't say that," Cas snapped. "If you say that, and you mean it, it means I risked my life for nothing. Do you think I'd ever risk my life for nothing?" 

Dean swallowed and looked up at him for the first time since he'd began. The rain drummed on the rooftop, and the light hanging overhead trembled with a roll of thunder from far somewhere far away. Castiel sat across the table, balanced on the edge of his chair, strung tight, like he meant to leap out of it. His face was hard and his eyes were wide, mouth pressed in a serious line across his face. 

The thunder came again, dull and vibrating. 

"What are you doing to me?" Dean whispered, and Cas twitched, eyes alight with something different. "What are you doing to me," Dean said again. "Every time damn time you do this to me. Why won't you leave me alone? Why won't you get out of my damn head?"

"Why did you save me?"

"I saved you because I knew you were a good man," Cas said objectively, like it was plain. He sounded almost irritated that Dean would question it. 

"See, you can't do that," Dean said. "You can't say that to me - you can't do that to me! Always watchin' me, like I don't know. Always - you can't come into it all, diggin' around, digging everything up in me!"

"Then stop letting me!" Cas yelled. 

Dean reached across the table, knocking it askew, grabbing Cas' collar, yanking him up. He was breathing hard, and his hand shook, woven into Cas' clothes. His own clothes, now that he thought more clearly. 

"Dean," Cas whispered, moving, and Dean stared straight into his eyes. The overlight swung back and forth, and Cas' hands were on his shoulders, moving up to his neck and he wanted to jump away, wanted to do something, thought he was going to choke him, but he just rested his fingers there, let them stay there, where his throat met the rest. 

"I only take as much as you give me, even if I ask for it," Cas said, and Dean trembled. 

"What are you doing to me?" he said again, not even recognizing his own voice. "Why do you do this to me. Make me feel like I'm fallin' apart?" 

Why had he stuck by him so hard these past two weeks? Wanted to bring him home, worried over him? 

His hand fell away from Cas' shirt and Cas slumped against the table, and to Dean's shock, climbed onto it, on his knees, hands back on Dean's shoulders. The table creaked under his weight, but here Cas was more level with him, and he titled his head slightly to kiss his neck. 

Dean's legs shook under him and he sobbed, grabbing Cas closer, pulling him tight to him, hands clawing at his back. 

"You're a good man," Cas whispered. "You're a good man, Dean," kissing his jaw and Dean didn't know what to do.

Didn't know what to say. 

When Cas kissed his mouth his hands slipped on his back. He hadn't kissed anyone in so long. 

Hadn't been touched like this in so long, he couldn't even remember, just the flood of endorphins that made him feel slow as molasses, and Cas' hands on his face, smoothing his hair back. 

He wondered if this is how it was meant to feel, it was so different from Lydia. 

It was so different from anything he'd ever had - the furthest thought from his mind was to ask Cas to stop. 

* * *

“Dean can dance,” Sam said, jabbing his older brother lightly under the ribs. It was Saturday night and the First Methodist was abuzz with people. The rain had finally slowed to a drizzle and the creeks had slowed, and everyone was restless energy after being couped up for nearly two days straight. 

“I can _not_ ,” Dean grumbled in response, taking a sip of his punch. Benny and Sam laughed, Benny’s heavy hand slapping the table. Cas stared at Dean with question, one eyebrow cocked. Dancer was not one of the things Cas would ever have pinned Dean Winchester for, but then again, the man was surprising him constantly. 

The night at the table, Cas had been just as shocked as Dean had. They'd pulled away from each other, untangled the rope of their bodies and seen each other and it was sudden and frightening, but it wasn't bad. Not bad enough to make them stop and Cas knew part of it was Dean hadn't been with anyone for a long time, that his body suddenly craved intimacy, and Cas was willing to give it to him, return what he could. 

His hips ached with the feeling of Dean's hands, the slow roll of them against the table, and their mouths hardly separating as they rutted against each other, trying not to think of anything other than slick places where their bodies were meeting, and Cas remembering clandestine moments long ago in far away places, dim shadowy places of his youth, and  _wanting_ , and thinking every school boy dream he ever had was wasted before the body shuddering against him, making his legs fall wide to accomodate, making him arch up to catch his cock against the softness of Dean's skin, to feel Dean do the same as he ground into the hollow of his hip. 

There was nothing to be done about it when it was over. Cas had tucked himself up, and Dean had gone to the washroom and they'd slept, spent, and seperately. 

Dean caught his eye and then quickly looked away, a curious flush creeping up his neck. 

“Do you really?” Cas asked, and Dean adjusted himself in his chair awkwardly as he pawed at the back of his neck. Not getting an answer, Cas let his gaze shift around the small circle to find puzzling smiles directed at the eldest Winchester.

“Come on Dean,” Sam pleaded, pushing at Dean again. “At least show Cas – I bet he hasn't ever seen flat foot before!”

“I don’t remember how,” Dean said sternly and Benny rolled his eyes.

“Oh, he remembers alright,” the cajun chimed in, leaning forward on the table to get Cas’ attention more effectively. “His mama knew all them old time dances and she taught him so good he wouldn’t ever forget it.”

“Dance like mama did, come on,” Sam insisted, softer than before, and Dean gave him a long and wearied look. He glanced back at Cas.

“I’m only doing this because you swear on your poor sinning life that you’ve never seen a man dance buck before, right?”

Cas crossed his heart solemnly.

“We have our own dances,” the dark haired man added quietly, referring to his mysterious heritage.

“Gypsies,” Benny grunted and Cas smiled secretly at him.

There as a brief moment of pause and then Dean stood, his chair scraping loudly on the floor and gathering the attention of most of the people in the crowded room. He took a moment to straighten his shirt, making sure the cuffs rolled up his arms were even, and Cas dared a glance at the generous curves of his forearms, thick muscle and light rise of vein snaking up the inside of his elbow. He allowed his eyes to wander up to his shoulders and then further at last to Dean’s face. The man looked impassive as he popped his spine once and then shook his arms out, like some athlete bound in concentration.

“He’s wearin’ his good boots,” Sam whispered, and the three other men glanced at him. He looked infinitely pleased with himself, watching Dean walk to the front to where the band was camped out. He met their eyes. “It’s gonna sound so fine on these floors.”

“Buck’ is all about foot work,” the teenager explained and Cas blinked blankly at him. “You’ll see,” he continued, taking a sip of Dean’s forgotten sweet tea.

“Christ almighty, I hope he was kidding when he said he forgot. I haven’t seen him dance buck since the wedding and he was drunk as a sailor then,” Benny said. The words were lost to Cas, so he turned his attention back to Dean instead.

He was standing in front of the band and was speaking to them, but it was too far to hear what he was saying. One of the players was smiling up at him, his gap-toothed grin growing with every word, head nodding up and down enthusiastically. The nosy crowd watched too, gathering closer to the small empty space in front of the band. Most of them held their plates or cups with them, chewing on their pie and barbecue as they spectated, eyes wide with curiosity.

Cas saw Dean sigh, a slight slope of his shoulders, and then he turned to face the rest of the room.

“Jo Beth Harvelle! I know you're here!” he called, eyes combing the people. Cas turned around in his chair to see who would reply. There was a small hush over the crowd and a shuffle as it parted, a small dirty-blonde teenager shoving her way to the front. Dean grinned at her and she gave him a stern look.

“What?” she called back and Dean gestured that she walk closer, and she did, letting him put his arm around her shoulders and bend to whisper in her ear. She pulled away and gave him an incredulous look and he stared intently at her.

“Oh, fine,” she said and Dean kissed her on the cheek once and turned back to the band, nodding at them.

“Joanna’s mama was our mama’s best friend growin’ up,” Sam said. “Everything we know, she knows.”

Cas nodded, fixated on the two at the front of the hall.

Without much more warning, the band counted off and the music kicked in. It was a fast, reeling, tune that had the crowd clapping in only a few bars.

Dean and Jo looked at each other and Jo grinned, and Cas scanned Dean’s features for some tell, but he didn’t find anything out of the ordinary until he let his eyes stray to his feet. One of Dean’s feet was tapping the ground in time and then he glanced at the violinist, assessing something Cas couldn’t glean from just listening.

In the small space of some syncopation, in the expert way that made it seem so wholly organic and unplanned, Dean began to dance.

His arms swung easily, his entire upper body so relaxed it was as if he was just standing still if you didn’t bother to look at his feet: they had begun to scuff the hard wood floor and all through the small hall were the heavy sounds of Dean’s boots as they smacked down against the ground.

A collective whoop rose and Cas’ eyes widened as he watched Dean heel-to-toe over and over in various rhythms, boots tapping out an advanced sort of percussion in perfect time with the music. He was an instrument all his own, an accent to the pluck and strum, stomping and tapping, hips moving in a slightly weighted way that suggested the center of Dean’s gravity was low-slung like a belt over them, arrowing down towards the drum of his feet.

“You dance that buck, boy!” Victor yelled and Dean lifted his head and did some maneuver that made the hair on Cas’ arms prick. When Cas looked at Jo, he saw her head bobbed in time and her own foot stomped the ground, her eyes glued to Dean.

As soon as Dean stopped, she started, and Dean clapped as she danced, keeping the down beat for her.

She hiked her soft blue dress in her hands, showing off more of her leg and her stockings. Her knees knocked and she swung her skirt back and forth in time scuffing her heels back with light little thumps. She was faster than Dean and lighter on her feet, laughing and smiling as she danced, feet never moving more than a few inches off of the ground. The soles of her shoes must have been worn, making a softer velvety sound on the floors, her movements close to her body and executed with the ultimate ease.

Cas’ eyes found Dean again and to his shock Dean was staring at him across the room. He gave Cas a brief, breathless, smile, and then it was over. The violinist sawed the final chords out and the crowd cheered and smiled when Dean picked Jo up, swung her up with one arm round her hip, and spun her once before setting her down again.

When they were done there was a charge left in the air, something static that spread through the people even as they started to break up, their spectating done. The band started into a light tune again and Dean stood for a moment speaking to Jo for a while, tying up some loose ends.

“I hope he teaches his Emma that,” Cas said, and Sam looked up at him. He had never considered it before that one day Emma would be old enough to even learn.  

It struck him so strongly and so unexpectedly it was nearly violent, this shocking thought that, maybe, for all its backwards ways, for all its lack, all that Sam knew was important. More important, more worth preserving, than he had always told himself it was.

But Cas had not been there long. He had only just arrived in their world of tired church gatherings and half-hearted attempts at loving thy neighbor and their town that seemed to be decaying straight out from the center, old memories rusting like scrap metal and gone arthritic and incognizant, dead in the eyes of the old timers.

Dean came back to the table, regaining his breath and slightly flushed.

He received his standard slaps on the back coming through the crowd, and a soft admonishment from Cas that Sam couldn’t make out, didn’t want to make out.

He didn’t want to hear anything else that would rattle around in his skull for a week. Dean teaching Emma those old dances, showing her how to tap her feet and feel the rhythm come up through her sole, natural as walking or running.

Those old, useless, dances, Sam thought. 

* * *

“Dean?” Sam asked as they were driving back up to the house after the social, bumping along in the truck. The roads were still soft, but it was easier than trying to navigate them on foot, when they could get messy. 

Cas had been told that he could go back to his house - the creek had receded and the bridge could be crossed. Sam had watched him and Dean make an awkward goodbye to each other, smiling strangely, and Dean had watched Cas' back pass away into the drizzling darkness for longer than was probably necessary, but he didn't say anything about it. 

“Mmm,” Dean replied, not looking away from the road. Sam had been thinking about this for a while, and he wasn’t sure how to ask.

“You know the fair’s coming up in a two weeks, and I was wondering if I could go by myself this year.”

Dean sighed, suddenly tired.

“I don’t know Sammy; it’s halfway through September and I need your help with that bumper crop." Dean hated to say no to his brother, but Sam knew better. He knew what time of year it was.

Sam shifted a little in his seat.

“I know that, and I’ll help you as much as you need, I promise. Just one day, that’s all I’m asking for. I can help you get it done.”

“Why are you so set on runnin’ in and out all of a sudden?” Dean said, suddenly suspicious, glancing at Sam. “Don’t think I don’t pay attention to all this nonsense you been up to. Runnin’ from here to Carraway once or twice a week doin’ God knows what.”

“I ain’t doin’ anything wrong, Dean,” he mumbled. “I’m just working.”

Dean adjusted his hands on the wheel.

“I found that coffee can Sammy. There’s nearly A hundred and seventy five dollars in there. What’s a kid like you need a hundred and seventy five dollars for.”

“You went through my room? And quit calling me a kid!” Sam said breathlessly, the first twinges of anger swelling up in him. “What the hell are you doing going through my stuff?”

“Because I thought the damn thing was loose! Karen Singer said she’d felt it shift when she was in there makin’ up your bed and wanted me to take a look at it. And it was loose alright."

“So what is it, Sammy. Why do you keep a coffee can full of cash hidden in your room? And why do you have to borrow my truck every week? And why the hell do you keep _lyin’_ about it! You know I can’t take lyin’. I can take a lot but I can’t take lyin’.”

“You wouldn’t understand,” Sam growled, fists tightening on the seat. “Just forget it.”

“Try me,” Dean said, bearing a slight right, headlights cutting through the darkness as they pulled up to the house. Dean cut the engine, the lights going off and they both got out of the truck.

“I just want to know what’s the matter with you lately!” Dean called, Sam walking ahead. Sam stopped on the porch and turned to his older brother. “You used to tell me everything and now you’re,” Dean gestured at the empty air. “We’re brothers, Sammy. We’re gonna work together someday; you gotta trust me.”

Sam looked around before meeting Dean’s eyes again.

“I go to Carraway to cut the lawn for a doctor. He pays me five dollars a week.”

“Sammy you’re not gonna need five dollars a week for much longer – you’re gonna start workin’ with me we’ve talked about this…” Dean rubbed his forehead and put the other hand on his hip, exhausted by this conversation.

“No, I do,” Sam said firmly. “I do, and I’m earning it all myself.”

“I can see that, Sam,” Dean said, walking up the porch steps to go into the house. He flicked on the light over the eating table and sighed. Karen had been kind enough to watch Emma for the night at her house, and there was a vacancy and coldness to the house that made Dean uneasy. “I just don’t understand it.”

“Well, maybe this will help you make sense of it,” Sam said roughly, and he came to Dean and held out a small and faded folded piece of paper.

“What’s this?” Dean said, nodding towards it.

Sam  held it out and Dean took it, unfolding it and smoothing the creases.

“What’s all this?” he said and Sam huffed.

 “What does it look like!”

Dean looked up at his little brother.

“Coonhounds? Cute, Sammy,” he laughed, passing the slip back to him.

“They’re serious dogs, Dean,” Sam argued. “They win trophies and a lot of them even win money.”

“Sam, when the hell are you going to train a dog while you’re working?” Dean snapped and Sam’s fingers closed protectively over the little ad.  “You’re gonna be down in that hole for ten hours a day – who the hell is gonna look after a dog while you’re doing that? Grow up Sam.”

“I am!” Sam yelled. “I am grown. I’m seventeen, and that’s old enough to make two hundred and fifty dollars for something I want! And it’s old enough to take a girl to the fair! And it’s old enough to decide that maybe -  maybe I don’t want to be like you! Maybe I want to be a doctor! Or a lawyer, or a pharmacist, or a dentist, or anything!”

“What you mean _like me_?” Dean said in a dangerous way. “Mining coal? You don’t want to mine coal? Is that what you’re sayin’? You too good for hard work like every other man I know, Sam?”

“That’s not what I said,” Sam hissed and Dean took a step closer to him.

“You got a girlfriend now, huh? Makes you a man, don’t it? Lovin’ her. Makes you know every goddamn thing there is to know. That what they tell you down in Carraway? Nothin’ but cheap whitetrash minin’ coal nowadays, right? Men too poor and too stupid to do anything else?”

“That’s not what they say, and that’s not what I think!”

“We keep the lights on for every goddamn person in this country!” Dean roared. “Dammit, Sam! You know who the fucking President can thank when he turns on his light to jerk himself off in the oval office? He can thank me! And nobody gives a _damn_ about me! Or you, or anyone else in that mine, but you do it anyway because there’s _honor_ in it!”

“What did mama always say!” Sam yelled, face red, and Dean stopped up short. “What did she say? What did you always tell me she said, or was you lyin’ about that?”

Dean felt all the air punch out of him.

“She wanted us to be proud of ourselves,” he said.

“Well, I won’t be if I’m minin’ coal Dean. I’ll go crazy. I’ll die if I do that. I’ll be…” his eyes lingered on Dean’s face and then looked away, ashamed.

“I don’t need you to tell me who I am,” Dean hissed.

 “It’s dangerous!” Sam shouted. “It’s – every statistic is going against you Dean! Every single one! And I’d like to live to see fifty! I’d like to get married and have kids without having to worry about not being able to play with them because my lungs is too black and I can’t breathe!”

“You better toughen’ up, Sam,” Dean said, voice lowering. “Because out here we don’t get a choice. Your eighteenth birthday you’ll get a coal shovel put right in your hand, same as me. And your Carraway girlfriend ain’t gonna want a goddamn thing to do with your honky ass. She just likes you because you ain't her kind or to get back at that rich daddy of hers. You watch.”

“Don’t talk about her that way,” Sam fumed. “Don’t you ever talk about her like that.”

“I’m just trying to tell you the truth. Save you a little heartache, because listen to me – it never works out for people like us. You think you can make it work – that maybe you can get promoted or you can have a baby, but it don’t fix nothin’. It don’t fix who you are. So you go out and get yourself a dog, Sam. See if that changes anything.”

 


	4. Chapter 4

He wandered down the red dirt road to the point where it veered off down the hill and another smaller foot path forked off of it, taking the shorter path through the woods to the bridge. His lunchbox clanged across his thigh as he walked the short incline to the end of the old rope bridge tying the two banks of Old Man’s creek together. With every step across it the bridge swung slightly under his feet, but it was a comfort now that it wasn't being thrased by the wind.

He peeked between the boards at the creek rushing by and up at the clear view of sky above and the mountains surrounding it all. A ways downstream a doe had stopped with her fawn and was staring at him while its baby drank. She encouraged it to hurry and they both went bounding away into the thicket, hooves skidding over loose pebbles of the stream bed and kicking up water, the little white flags of their tails the last thing Dean saw before he came to where the bridge ran out.

His family had lived back in the hills of Elbow Holler for three generations.

Growing up there had been debate on whether they would ever move from the little dove gray house on the hill to the Venus Company camp. It certainly would have been closer to everything – including the schools - but they were arguments that ended quickly. His father was too stubborn, and his mother had gotten sick and there was no chance of her moving.

Presently, Dean’s head was a mess of thoughts. 

Sam's anger still simmered in the house, following him everywhere he went. He'd hardly come out of his room, until the rain stopped, and then he had been the first out the door, disappearing into the thickets without a word, abandoing Dean to a solitary day of his break before work. 

And then there was the issue of Cas - of what had been swimming in their head all since that storming Friday night. 

He closed his eyes and felt him all over, could smell him on the clothes he'd worn. He hadn't the first clue as to what to handle it - everything was too much to digest. 

He felt ripped apart and slapped back together, but better, he guessed. Better. 

The day opened its bleary eyes as he made his way up to the mine, slipping back into the same sort of skin as the rest of them, smoking, talking. Cas stuck close by him, but otherwise it wasn't any different than it had been - their eyes would catch, a twitch would come to Dean's fingers, but nothing more. 

It was supposed to be an easy day, away from the tumbling thoughts and the hurt from arguing with Sammy that was sorer than a hangnail. 

He thought they had it planned, he thought they had it settled. The way things were meant to go, and all of a sudden, a thousand things at once. 

Coonhounds, Cas - his head pounded just to think of it. Sammy didn't want to mine? But he'd always wanted to mine. He'd never said anything otherwise.

Underground, Dean didn't have to think about it. He only had to think about the job.

* * *

Cas was struggling with the miner again. He didn't understand it - he had Ash check it out several times, but there was nothing to be done. 

It was all working perfectly, responded perfectly, but the minute Cas was alone there seemed to be a slight change. One microsecond between him and machine where something was off, a tiny catch between his thumb flicking the lever and the head adjusting. 

He left his shifts feeling more and more frustrated - he was still pulling cuts, but just barely over his usual average, and it was dropping fast. 

And then there was the echo. He didn't know when it had started, but there was the sense that his name was being called and he would stop the miner and yell out, only to find no one had been talking to him - that Dean couldn't even  hear him usually over all the other machinery going at the same time. 

He tried to be reasonable about it. He was more stressed than usual, what with the machine, and with Dean. What they were, what they meant. 

It swam in his head nearly constantly, the desire to be close to him, to prove over and over what he'd meant that night, but he wasn't afforded the time and it made him antsy. 

He knew, far better than anyone, that Dean didn't need the struggle that Cas probably presented. He was a father, a guardian to his younger brother, the sole provider for both. The last thing he needed was something undefined keeping him up at night, and so Cas left it to himself to relive, not mentioning it, even when they were alone. They didn't touch, not like they had, when it seemed to desperate and needed for both of them. 

They merely were, and it was good, he knew. It was alright to just exist with Dean, to play cards or talk. 

He didn't want to let him down. 

Perhaps that's why he didn't tell him, when it happened. 

Something put the fear of God in him not to say anything. They had lost so much time - the bad flooding, the accident. 

Dean couldn't afford it, Cas couldn't afford it. None of them could afford another upset. 

So he hadn't said anything, didn't mention it.  Didn't bring up the vision - the moment he was mining and then, for a flash, for an instant, something had seized him, grabbed hold of him inexplicably and his eyes had felt pried open. 

The control box tightened in his hand and the miner powered through the rock, and through the veil he could see it - thousands upon thousands of bones pouring out of the cavern, rattling into the sweeper, grinding together. Bleached white skulls being decimated before his eyes by the miner's teeth, plowing through their empty eye sockets, crushing them into powder before his eyes, mangling their faces. 

He'd opened his mouth to scream, but then he was there, back where he was, the miner off, his body wracked by shivers, and nothing but coal in the sweeper, nothing but coal - coal all around. 

Coal, black coal. 

He felt himself gag, felt himself turn away, try to catch his breath. 

It was just nerves, he told himself. Just nerves and nothing more. 

* * *

"You noticed anything with Cas lately," Victor said, and Dean looked up from the bulletin he had been reading. They were getting their mail, and the pamphlet had been mixed in. Some church notice. 

"What about him?" Dean said, looking back to the bulletin.

"I don't know," Victor said. "But he's been actin' real strange. Don't barely hang around after work these days."

"I see him," Dean said. "He comes up and plays cards in the evenings..." he looked at Victor. "He say anything to you?"

"No," Victor said, genuinly surprised. "You really haven't noticed?"

Dean tried to think. Of course he'd noticed a change, but it wasn't anything bad, he didn't think. 

Just...different. 

But how could it not be, after what they had done? He saw Cas nearly every day since, one way or another. Sam even talked to him, when he wasn't busy not talking to Dean. 

Dean knew he should say something to his brother, but the words never seemed right. He didn't want Sam to be unhappy, he knew that. He knew it deep in him that he didn't, but he didn't know what else he could tell him. There wasn't any money to send him to any school, there wasn't anything Dean could do for him other than what he had already offered. 

He wanted a way to make Sam understand that he needed to be able to provide for himself someday, to be safe and accountedfor. To know he had a place that could deliver a check to him. Dean couldn't make any of the rest happen, no matter how bad Sam wanted it. It was too much risk. 

But Cas was a seperate issue, and Dean chewed the inside of his lip, trying to think. 

"He said somethin' to me... a few weeks ago," Dean started. "Said it was bothering him. About the mine, I mean." 

"That don't sound like Cas," Victor concluded, and Dean rolled his shoulders, tucking his mail under his arm. 

"I told him it wasn't anything and he agreed with me," Dean continued. "I didn't think it was still bothering him - if that's even what it is."

"I ain't known Cas long, but I know he ain't one for theatrics," Victor said simply. "And he's puttin' on a real show these days."

Dean didn't know what he meant, but he knew it wasn't good. 

Cas came up to him when they were all saying goodbye and Dean looked him all over, watching for some sign, but Cas seemed generally the same. Just a little jumpy. 

"Stop in here with me a minute," Dean said, going into the drugstore, Cas following. He lead him down the rows till they came to the sweets aisle and stood there, at the back of it, Dean watching people's heads over the shelves. 

"You alright?" he asked, and Cas stared at him. 

"I'm fine," he said briskly. "Why?"

"Nothin'," Dean said. "It's just - you'd tell me if there was somethin' the matter."

Cas shifted on his feet. 

"Cas? Is this about...is this about me?"

"No," Cas said immediatly. "It's..." he shook his head, touched his forehead with his fingers. 

"Is this about that eye?" 

Cas looked up at him. 

"I told you not to worry about that," Dean said softly. "Nothin' came of it."

Cas' eyes bounced wildly around the room, at the different candies.

"Cas? Nothin' came of it," Dean repeated.

"What if it wasn't nothing," Cas whispered, meeting Dean's eyes. 

"What do you mean," he started. "It  _is_ nothing. It was nothing. It's just a coal mine, Cas."

Castiel's hands fussed with his shirt buttons, all nervous energy. 

"...Dean. How many operators has this mine had in the past year?" he asked, and Dean thought. 

"Three. Ricky, Ronnie, and you." 

"Don't you think that's a little much for just a year?" Cas continued. 

"Accidents happen," Dean said. "You know that."

"But what if they aren't  _accidents_ ," Cas stressed. 

"What could they be if they ain't accidents -" 

"The last operator said that the miner wasn't - he couldn't control it. He said he heard things, saw things..."

"Ronnie always says that," Dean said, voice a little harsh. "Cas I don't have time for this," he said. "Whatever you're up to, you better clear it up with me."

"Dean, it's happening to me."  _  
_

Dean stared at him, dropped his arms from where they were crossed from listening to his sides. 

"What?"

Cas shrunk into himself, his shoulders folded in. He touched his head, and Dean could see the slight scar from the gash he'd had there, the image of him worrying it now interposed with the time at the drugstore counter, touching the bandage. This was different. Cas's hands seemed thin and wiry and unpredictable, like he didn't know what he was doing as he did it. Unconcious. 

"I can't go down there again," he whispered. "You were right, Dean, something is trying to scare me. It wants me out." 

"Who?" Dean said. "Who is it and we'll take care of it."

Cas licked his pale lips. This wasn't the man who had sat across from him at the kitchen table - this wasn't the sure, soft sense of understanding or the reserved tranquil energy that Cas usually exhibited. This was something raw and afraid. 

Terrified. 

"Think about it Dean. I'm not the only one. The pumps. Benny's belt. The rock fall. Dean, those things, they don't make sense. There are too many. Every since I've started working here we've had nothing but setbacks. Ever since I started pulling ten cuts - really pulling them. The company has made double what it used to, we're swimming in coal, but something is  _wrong_. The further we get the worse it gets."

"Cas, it's just a coal mine. That's all it is. We work there everyday - we do what we have to do, we get our checks, right? This is just - this is just stress. Just - just stop worryin' so much, alright? I'm fine. You're fine."

Cas swallowed and when Dean reached out his hand to touch his, he drew it away. 

"You don't believe me," he said. 

"Cas, what is there to believe? What am I 'sposed to think? That the mountain is angry at you?" He tried to laugh and Cas looked away. 

The mountain. The old mountain, and he was supposed to believe that it festered? That a dead rock had finally had enough of being clawed to pieces - had reached its breaking point. 

He was supposed to believe that? 

"It doesn't matter," Cas said. "It's too late." 

His eyes were flat and glassy, like he had a fever. Like he was sick.  

* * *

The day after, Cas showed, but he wasn’t there to talk to anyone. He banged on the trailer door, demanding to be let in. Dean had never seen him like that – so angry and unglued.

He demanded to speak with Zachariah and the door opened and he banged inside. Everyone stood, watching the shadows pass back and forth from the windows until, at last, Cas was nearly tossed out, and Zachariah came down the steps, smoking his cigarette, hand in the pocket of his ribbed sweater.

“Every cut under ten we dock two dollars!” he yelled across the yard and there was an immediate uproar. “You can thank him!” he said, pointing to Cas and Cas grit something, cursed something out that nobody could understand. Zachariah chuckled and then turned back into the trailer, shutting the door behind him.

“What in the fresh hell,” Dean hissed, walking across the yard to where Cas was starting to stagger away, back down the hill. 

“Cas!” he shouted, but Cas didn’t stop. “Dammit Cas I’m talking to you!” Dean said, reaching out and yanking him around, and all of Dean’s thoughts fell away. Cas looked exhausted – he was white as a sheet and his eyes had deep purple bruises under them from lack of sleep and he was trembling.

“What the hell is wrong?” he said lowly, pulling Cas where prying eyes wouldn’t see.

Cas looked around, eyes bouncing everywhere.

“Cas? What in Jesus’ name are you pulling? Two dollars docked? This was something yesterday, but now..."

“They won’t listen to me,” Cas whispered, suddenly fisting his hands into Dean’s clothes. “I tried to tell them - Dean that something…something is _in_ there.”

“This again -"

Cas’ fingers tightened.

“Listen!" he cried. "Dean. Something – something is in there, and they know. They knew when that first miner was killed, and then knew when the other one lost his mind. Something is in there, Dean and it wants us _out_.”

Dean wrestled away from Cas’ grip.

“What are you talking about? Have you lost your mind?”

“That day that I saved you! Dean, I knew, I could feel it – I knew it was going to do something. There’s no other explanation for it. You’re too good a worker, I knew that you wouldn’t let something that big slip by you. You would have known the minute you walked in that the top was bad, Dean, I _know_.”

“Cas!” Dean yelled and Cas flinched and stopped, staring at him with wide, petrified eyes. “Cas, two dollars. Two dollars docked. You know we can’t afford that. None of us can – and none of us can make ten cuts.”

“I can’t, Dean I can’t. Not till they listen. Not till they stop mining there.” Cas whispered and Dean shook his head.

“Why are you doing this?” he said and Cas’ face sunk into resolution. 

“To protect you,” he said, as if it were obvious.

“I,” Dean started, but he didn’t even know what to say. “I – I _trusted_ you, Cas. I told you things…did things…” he wiped his hand over his face and Cas’ expression wavered. "I thought I could count on you, I thought, for fuck's sake, Cas I thought you were the one who wasn't going to break on me!"

“Dean, it isn’t like that…”

“I can’t risk this job, Cas! I’ve got a little girl who needs me! And Sammy! I’m still payin’ off Lydia’s hospital bills! And you can’t throw me a fuckin’ bone? They not paying you enough or something?”

“No!” Cas said. “It’s the mine, Dean. It’s the mine. I know it, I felt it. I felt it so certainly. It wants us _out_.”

“You take a day off, Cas,” Dean said, backing away. “Sort whatever the hell this is out and don’t come back till you do because I don’t have time for this.”

“Dean!” Cas grabbed his arm as he turned. “Dean, please. Don’t go back in there.”

Dean shook his arm loose.

“I thought you were gonna be different,” Dean said. 

He turned around, and Cas’ hand dropped to his side.

* * *

Cas showed up to work the next day, and the next. 

It went on for a whole week. 

He didn't say anything to Dean, or Victor, or Benny. 

It was as if they were right back at the beginning, only working and nothing else. 

* * *

The mine was doing well, but little things started happening, minor mishaps and setbacks, and Cas stayed quiet through all of them. Didn't say a word about any of it. 

Let Dean alone, let him go about his business, stayed out of his way.

Dean thought about what Cas had said that night about him, how he was a good man. 

How he had believed it, because Cas had saved him. Had proved it to him irrevocably somehow, but now, everything in Dean wanted to keep it as it was. He didn't want to think of what Cas was saying as true - how could he let himself. All that jeopardized. 

It was the same with Sam; he couldn't allow himself. If he did, who would hold it together? Who would do the work that needed to be done, keep them safe? 

He watched Cas work, crouched in his corner. In the mornings he read letters and chain smoked, clothes baggy and rumpled. His hair was in constant dissaray and he always seemed tired and nervous. He jumped at loud noises, twitched at bright lights. 

"How's your mother?" Dean said one day, and Cas had looked up at him for an immeasurable moment and then looked back down at the piece of paper in his hand, sucking the end of his cigarette.   
  
"Dead," he said, voice devoid of any emotion. 

Dean didn't say anything, just stared at him. His face was drawn and pinched; no easiness. None of the confidence he'd had those first moments of knowing him. He didn't watch them anymore but kept his eyes trained on the ground, as though he had resigned himself to something already. 

At home, things weren't much better. Sam snuck out to Carraway during the day, Dean knew that, but he hadn't said a word about the coffee can.

Dean had simply come home one day to find it sitting on his nightstand, all 175 dollars still inside, not a cent less than what Dean had counted the day he had found it. Dean may not have agreed with him, but he had never asked for his money, and he knew what Sam meant by it. He'd sat next to the bed and held it, felt how heavy it was. The slight clink and slide of change inside it, the rustle of bills. 

When he was Sam's age he hadn't allowed himself to dream for long. Not to dream hard enough to earn 175 dollars from it. He wasn't strong enough for that, he figured.

He knew he would be like his father, that he'd die like him. He'd take every hit along the way, if he had to, if it meant that Sam had someone good to look up to. Someone to show him the example of living decently. His father was a hard worker, but he'd been cruel. He'd been thoughtless and brazen with his words and drunk himself to death. Everyone knew it, even if they didn't say.

John would have taken the money himself, would have watched Sam crumble when he spent it on a new plow, a new mule. Anything. 

John wouldn't have felt what Dean felt then, looking at that coffee can. John wouldn't have been proud of Sam.

He wanted to tell Cas about it. He wanted to ask him what to do, but every time he tried Cas looked so afraid - as if at any moment he might drown in it. 

* * *

There is a term in the mining industry that somewhat explains the endurance of mountains. Mechanically, it is the maximum slope at which an object can remain at rest while on an inclined plane. It is the threshold of the force of gravity acting against, the paramount of resistance of those ancient, tireless forces that wear mountains and wear men. 

How long something can hold on before it all falls apart.

This phenomenon is referred to as the angle of repose. 

* * *

"Where’s Cas!” Dean shouted over the roar. 

He listened to it all break down. Smoke was filtering through the air, thin enough to see through - men standing like they had no clue what had hit them. 

Dean tried to remember exactly - the flood of memory. That morning, saying goodbye to Sam, ruffling his hair where he sat at the table, trying to find something to say. 

The slow trip up the hill, the shuttle inside, and everything quiet for a long time, until it wasn't. 

The machinery had begun to override and Benny stepped back from the belt, watching it move faster and faster all on its own. He turned to Dean and when his eyes fell on him they were so wide they nearly took up all the room on his grease-smudged face. He wanted to say something, Dean knew, but there was nothing to say. 

Before either of them could say anything more, there was a sudden and titanic sound of metal on rock reverberating through the shaft and both men turned towards it and knew what had made it.

“Dean,” Benny said, grabbing his shoulder, and Dean paused only a fraction of a moment to look back at his friend. 

The emergency lights spun, rotating over Benny’s face that became more and more frantic.

“You have to get out!” Dean shouted and Benny shook his shoulder. “Go!” Dean yelled again, and Benny’s hand slipped awkwardly away. The eerie red strobe lit Dean’s features for just a moment, cast them in crimson shadow, and then on the next turn Dean was gone and nothing but darkness stood in his place.

Dean pressed himself to the wall, watching the top. It was flaking off, and most of it was holding, but Dean knew that all the vibration was shivering up through the rock, teasing at the pins. He watched the top and with every shudder of the earth he waited for it all to buckle. 

The pins held and he was able to feel over the walls. The radio was flooding the shaft with static over the mechanical scream of the machinery and over that he could hear the siren wailing in the distance in time with the thumping pulse of hot blood in his temple.

Faintly, there was the shout and commotion of the other miners making their way to the surface, their cries echoing down the long cuts and billowing under the plastic sheeting with every gush of outside air.

As he came closer to the mine's face he could hear the squeal of gears being pushed to their limits and towards the end he abandoned the wall and rushed towards it and slipped past the curtain and into the small room. He could see the hulking shadow of the miner at first, and he knew without looking hard that it was not where it was supposed to be – it was supposed to be lined up with the face, but it had gone diagonal. The light spun over the room and Dean saw Cas’ head drooped over the miner’s side, saw him lift it till it smacked against the wall as he pushed all his weight against the mammoth drill crushing him into the side of the mine, trying to pry  himself loose.

The miner had backed up and veered right, right over the spot where Cas usually kneeled, pinning him there with nearly three tons of metal slowly pressing into his body.

Cas gasped a slightly strangled sound and Dean crawled to the miner, watching the dark head spin madly on, sparks flying. He turned, saw the slight shudder of the curtain, and knew that as long as the vents were open he had a chance. The vents circulated clean air through the mine, run by outside generators the same as everything else, but if something tampered with them, they would only have fifteen minutes. 

Methane could build up and ignite, incinerating them both before they even suffocated, and Dean wasn't positive they had that sort of time. 

“It doesn’t want you!” Cas said suddenly, panting. “Get out it doesn’t want you!”

All Dean felt was relief that he was even alive, and he could have cried at the sound of his voice. Stubborn and angry, and much more like Cas' than it had been in the past few weeks. 

Dean shook his head.

“The fuck I’m going anywhere,” he grit, looking around. He caught side of the long thick cable attached to the miner and looked around for something to tear it with, to cut the power. He didn’t know how the generator hadn’t kicked yet – he didn’t know anything anymore.

“It doesn’t want you,” Cas gasped again, on the verge of deliriousness. “It’s me – it was always me. The miner – it hates the miner it hates it,” he kept on and Dean shushed him harshly. Cas coughed and blood leaked from the side of his face and he made another yell as the miner kept speeding up. The black studded cylinder of its tungsten capped head revolved in the air and there was the sharp acidic scent of hot metal in the air as it spun and spun catching nothing in its teeth, roaring louder, as though it were just as angry, just as venemous and violent as they were. 

No rock, no seam to follow, just rutting helplessly at the air, whirring faster and faster.

The power cable was nearly bolted to the machine, a godsend when trying to keep in the coal and a nightmare trying to cut it loose. The thick braids of wires inside the cable would be impossible to tear or break using his hands or feet – the most common cause of damage was often because of an inexperienced operator backing the miner itself over the cable, severing it.

Dean felt along the floor of the mine for something, anything, to bash the washer attaching the cable loose, gloved hands finally falling on something blunt and square. His fingers closed around it and he knew its weight.

He lifted the control box up, closer to the streaming red light, staring at the blinking green eye in the center.

“I’m going to back it up!” he told Cas, holding up the controls and Cas shook his head.

“Won’t respond!” he gasped.

Dean pressed his hands down on the levers anyway, and the machine did nothing but spin madly on. Cursing, Dean threw the controls to the ground and climbed over the side of the miner, as close to Cas as he could get.

“Tell me what to do to get you out!” he yelled, and Cas shook his head again. “Don’t give me that shit! Don’t you give me that shit about leaving you here you dumb son of a bitch! Now answer the fucking question before I kill you myself!” Dean continued, infuriated by Cas’ response.

Cas’ mouth twitched in pain before he spoke.

“There’s – there’s a crowbar,” his words cut off and Dean looked frantically around for it, hefting it in his hands before taking it over to the cable again. He slammed it down on the washer over and over and alternately began prying at it, trying to get it loose enough to slip the cables out, levering his foot against it. The head was turning faster and faster and Cas was groaning, the weight of the machine bearing down on him with every second. Dean thought of Ricky Wade, mangled, alone. 

He wondered if Ricky hadn't ever said anything, hadn't voiced his fears, even more afraid of what they'd all say, of his job, of what they'd tell him. 

“Come on, come on,” Dean bit, prying as much as he could, and finally he saw it budge. He reached down and yanked the cables out and all at once the miner stopped, hydraulics hissing and the head froze with a sharp, fierce, snarl.

“I’m gonna use the buggy to knock this thing off of you!” Dean yelled over the siren, but when he looked, Cas’ head was back to drooping over the machine. “Cas!” He reached forward and pulled Cas’ head up and Cas’ mouth was leaking blood faster now – something was pressing on him too hard, maybe even puncturing him.

“T-the mountain…” he whispered. “The mountain. It hates the miner, grinding – grinding away at it. It hates it…we have to give back. Like in the old days…”

“You’re not makin’ any sense, Cas!” Dean said. “You’re delirious!”

“Go!” Cas croaked. “I have to stay – I have to stay and give it what it wants!” He rolled his eyes up to Dean. “That little girl,” he whispered. “Has to grow up with you. She has to – know how wonderful you are.”

Dean backed away from the miner and turned, running as fast as he could to get to the scoop. He hauled himself up into the seat and gunned it, swinging it closer to where the miner was sitting. The belt whirred, and Dean smelt burnt rubber and metal everywhere. He shifted gears and angled the scoop towards the corner of the miner – he just had to move it enough to slip Cas out. That’s all he had to do.

And he’d be damned if he lost one more thing.

He refused to let Cas be the next in the long list of people he convinced himself he could go without.

He would not lose him.

He was tired of losing, of letting himself be shut into the dark.

He slammed the machine forward with a lurch and it smashed into the side of the miner and Dean felt the heat at the back of his neck where muscles had torn from the impact, but he kept pushing it, kept throwing all the weight into it, trying to move the miner just an inch. Every slam he felt something else chip away. Lydia. His father. Sammy. The fear and the worry. He was tired of it. He was tired of being ground down, he was tired of being helpless, feeling like he didn't have a choice in anything. In who to love, in who he wanted to be.

He was twenty three years old. He was a young man, a good man.

He would not be turned bitter and black-hearted. He would not be a million years of tireless grudge, taking it out on everyone around him, demanding they suffer in return. 

The scoop whirred under him and he kept pushing it until there was a metallic scream of the miner scraping along the mine floor, the back corner catting out just a little bit. He crawled out of the seat of the scoop and into the small space where Cas was, easing him out and talking him through it. The red lights flashed and Dean dragged Cas away from the miner, keeping their heads down as Cas limped along, barely conscious. He maneuvered them around the miner and just as he was getting Cas on the other side, he heard a loud thunk.

The air went still and the curtain hung limp.

Dean fumbled for his respirator, going over to the wall and setting Cas down as gently as he could, looping the elastic over his head, Cas’ eyes looking up at him glazed over and pained.

“Don’t even think about it,” Dean said, situating the rescuer over his own face and then picking Cas up again, barely registering his weight.

He walked them over to the belt and stared at it – there was no way they could ride it out going towards the back of the mountain – the outside would have to reverse it.

“Come on Benny,” he whispered. “Don’t move,” he said to Cas, setting him down again, running as fast as the low ceiling would allow to get to the radio. The static roared back but he grabbed it off of its hook and hauled the heavy metal box back to the belt and set it down, jamming buttons and raising it to his face, pulling the mask away.

“Reverse this goddamn belt!” he shouted, and there were broken voices in response. “Reverse it, Benny! Now! It cut the vents…” there was a low rumble.

Dean looked at Cas and Cas looked at the miner, clutching at his stomach where blood was seeping through his clothes. The machine’s head began to turn again. Slowly, slowly, at first, but then picking up.

They watched as it began to accelerate, pushing forward and colliding with the rock and then there was another, fainter sound. A soft rush. 

A churning, wet sound, and the rock began to crumble under the miner head and small flows of runoff, trapped in an old shaft behind there’s, or a small gap in the rock, began to shift. Dean looked, watching the water snake across the floor, trickling and getting stronger.

“Reverse the belt!” he snapped into the radio, standing Cas up as much as he could to keep him out of the water that was beginning to build up. The pressure could give at any second – the whole thing could come down and flood.

Dean looked down, and there was a grind and the belt slowed to a stop before it began to move again. The water was up to their ankles.

“Dean,” Cas croaked, and Dean grabbed Cas and pulled him closer, water sloshing at his shins, and the miner spinning madly, madly on.

He pushed Cas up onto the belt and Cas kicked in agony, screamed, and then Dean was lying down next to him and covering their heads as they shot through the narrow passage, having to lay so flat and so still to avoid being scraped along the top of the tunnel the belt was fed through, and into the light, sudden, and blinding.

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

Jessica put her hand on the door handle of the truck and waited a moment. 

"Is it ok?" she asked. 

"It's ok," Sam said. "It's my birthday, and Dean said I could invite whoever I wanted."

Jessica nodded and before Sam could climb out of the cab, she grabbed his sleeve, pulling him in for a chaste kiss. 

"Happy birthday, by the way," she said, smiling against his mouth, and Sam smiled dizzily back, pushing against her for another kiss. 

Sam cut the engine on the truck and they both slid out onto the loose dirt of the driveway and Jessica looked all around the property, smiling at the dove gray house on the hill. 

"You never told me your house was so beautiful," she said as Sam came around the side, looking back at the house with her. "Look at the view - " Jess continued, pushing her sunglasses up, reaching back inside the truck to pull out her present: a thin slim wrapped thing she tucked under her arm. "You wake up to that every day?" she marveled, and Sam shrugged.

"Yeah, with the sun right in my eyes," he said, and she thwacked him with the present, shutting the truck door with a loud bang. 

Jess stared at the house; it was evening. 

Behind it, the valley was water colored with clouds and soft light. The pines stretched on for miles, broken up by crops of other trees, and as the wind shifted, warm with coming summer and the air was fragrant with the smell of unknown flowers drifting up from the valley, a hundred kinds that Sam probably all knew by name, by sight, by the texture between his fingers. Jess had never seen something so wide before, and suddenly Sam's stature made sense. 

Of course he had come from this place. 

"Come on," Sam said, leading her up to the house by the hand. "That's Daisy," he pointed out the mule sleeping with her foot cocked in the last beams of sun, head swaying and Jess grinned, squeezing his hand, and letting Sam pull her up the front porch steps. 

"Am! Am!" there was a sudden flurry of foosteps and Emma came, pink-faced, to the door, pushing it open with all her strength, eager to get to him, Karen Singer chasing after her. 

"Come here! Emma Lou c'mere and sit back down for the party!" 

"Am!" she cried, and Sam laughed, pulling the door open some more so they could go inside. 

The kitchen was decorated with crepe streamers and everyone was spread around talking, most of them already digging into their food while they waited for Sam to come home. The moment Jessica and Sam came into view they were bombarded with happy birthdays from all sides and Jess could only grin, overwhelmed by the sudden wave of people eager to talk to her and meet her - that Jess they'd heard so much about. 

Emma was running between everyone, stealing food and charming them all next to death and Sam looked around at all the different faces he knew; the Singers, the Harvelles, Victor and Benny, friends and neighbors he had known since birth, but there were two missing. 

"Where're Dean and Cas?" he asked, Emma bumping against his legs, wanting to be held. 

"Am!" she whined, and Sam bent to pick her up, groaning at how heavy she was.

"Lord, Chicken, you're fat," he exclaimed.

"Am! Am birthday!" she said and Sam nodded, still looking around.

"Karen?" he said, looking to the woman who was currently putting 18 candles into his cake. "Where are Dean and Cas?" he asked again, and Karen smiled. 

"Your brother's picking Cas up from the doctor, they'll be back soon."

That made sense, Sam figured. Cas was about due for another check up. The accident in September had torn him up, and everyone was keeping their eye on him these days, especially Dean. That's what you did when your best friend's liver was nearly torn in half, though, Sam assumed. 

He remembered the accident like it was yesterday; he remembered dropping everything and taking Dean's truck down to the site, wading through the gathering crowd, looking everywhere for Dean, and when he'd seen him standing there, talking to an amublance driver, he hadn't thought twice, just barreled into him. 

He'd said he was sorry, about all of it, and all Dean had done was kiss the top of his head and held him. 

Cas wasn't in as good a shape - a fractured pelvis, ruptured liver, and plenty of  other mess. He'd spent four months laid up in the hospital before he'd finally been able to come home, and Dean had made the trip up there as much as he could, which never seemed like enough for him, and then, finally, he was allowed to come back. 

He was even allowed to work the miner if he wanted, but Cas had declined. 

They'd hired him right away as an administrator at the new mine being headed by Bobby. It was a little further away than the last one, but nobody complained. Everyone just did what they usually did. They went to work. 

It had been a long half a year, but good had come out of it. The No. 6 mine had been shut down and a new one had been opened up - a safer one, from what he could tell. Dean had been pushing for more union talk and it had paid off with higher safety regulations and better pay for the long hours. He had even stood on a picket line to get it, but it had worked. It wasn't anything incredible, not enough to make the news, but enough. He had never seen his brother more obsessed with coal mining, and it was annoying as hell, but good. 

Things were changing; they weren't piling up so high anymore, it felt like. 

"Chicken, stop, ow," he laughed, coming back into the present. Emma yanked on his hair to get his attention, Jess escaping from some get-to-know you talk to slip next to him again. Emma looked shyly at her when she approached. and Jess waved. 

"Are you Emily Louise?" Jess asked, bending closer and Emma hid her face in Sam's neck, giggling bashfully. 

"Say 'yes ma'm'," Sam prompted and Emma lifted her head. 

"Bye bye!" she said, waving back, and Jess grinned. 

"She just learned that one, and now she won't quit sayin' it," Sam explained, and Jess leaned in and kissed Emma on the cheek before she was squirming to get down again. 

Sam and Jess stood  next to each other, saying their hellos, and Sam knew Jess was worried about him. They'd talked about it, of course. What eighteen meant, but now it was so real. It was literally standing right in front of him, and Sam didn't know what to do. 

He knew he couldn't say no, not after everything that had happened. 

He had to be there for Dean; he wasn't a kid anymore. They were all they had left, and if they went down, they'd go down together. He reached over and grabbed her hand, glad to have her close. It was the start of the long summer, and he was happy she was back from Louisville; no more phonecalls or letters. Just each other. 

Now that he'd showed her Elbow he wanted to show her everything if he had the time - the paths and all of Dean and him's old haunts.

He'd make sure he took her to the fair too, before she had to go back to school and start applying for universities. 

He had over three hundred dollars in his coffee can now - almost enough to buy her the leather wallet that he'd seen in a shop window in Ashland and still have some left over if anything happened in the fall. 

"Sam, you want to start opening your presents honey?" Ellen Harvelle said breaking up his thoughts. He watched as Karen brought the cake to the table and everyone gathering around from various parts of the house. The record player was going, and Sam could hear it just in the other room. 

"Dean ain't here yet," Sam said, and Ellen smiled.

"That's alright, he said you could start. Just not to cut the cake before he showed up!"

"Sure," he said after a moment, feeling half-hearted about it. Dean had been the one to say he should have a party in the first place; opening his things without him felt like cheating.

Still, he went obediently to the table, opening whatever they set in front of him. New shirts, whatever money folks could spare, and Al Green's latest record from Jess, and he'd blushed when he'd opened it, and she'd winked, promising they could put it on later. 

"This one is from Emma," Karen said, handing him a rounded thing wrapped in newspaper. Sam tore into the paper and his heartbeat slowed.

A red hat. He looked at the glossy finished plastic and the beautiful shining new headlamp attatched to it.

"Thank you," he said softly, looking at Jess who smiled as much as she could, nodding her aproval.

"That's a good hat, too," Victor commented. "That must have cost somethin' - let me see that." He reached out and plucked it out of Sam's lap, Benny and him discussing at length how ridiculous it was to have spent so much on a helmet that was just going to get beat to hell and back. Sam let his hands fall to his empty lap before he got up and started hugging whoever he could find, telling them thank you for everything. He was squeezed so much he figured the life would go right out of him, and he knew he shouldnt' have been anything but grateful to belong to a place like that. One that gave so much to each other and took care of one another, even when he refused to see it. 

"Well eat somethin'!" Karen said, ushering him over to the long buffet of all sorts of food, pushing plates at him and Jessica, but before she could insist anything more on them, the back door slammed open and there were heavy boots pounding through the back hallway, and Sam knew who they had to belong to. Jess' eyes shot to him and he looked back to where Dean had appeared.

"Sam, get your ass out here," he said loudly, startling everyone in the room. Sam stared at him.

"What'd I do -" he started.

"Now!" Dean yelled, turning on his heel to go back out. Emma started to cry, and Karen picked her up, shushing her.

"Was it me?" Jess said and Sam looked at her, shaking his head. She bit on her thumbnail nervously, following Sam to the back porch, the rest of them following.

Cas stood, leaning against the side of the truck, staring up at the house, and when Sam looked at him, Cas glanced over to where Dean was standing by the mule shed.

"C'mere boy," Dean growled as Sam approached, grabbing his collar and yanking him into the stall.

"Dean - I'm sorry -" Sam cried, not understanding, and then he stopped. Dean let go of his collar and Sam swayed on his feet. 

He looked up at Dean, mouth falling open. 

Dean pushed his head back to where it had been. 

"Don't look at me," his older brother laughed. "I ain't gonna take care of him."

Sam couldn't breathe. 

There he was, sitting in a crate lined with a ruck sack in the middle of the hay-strewn floor. His big paws were propped against the edge and he was leaning out over it, sniffing the ground and whining shrilly, little back legs dancing with confusion. His long chocolate-colored ears flopped and he shook his head, long whip-tail wagging a mile a minute and beating against the ruck sack with each pulse. 

"You gonna be proud of that dog?" Dean asked and Sam nodded up and down, frantically. "Then you better make him a dog to be proud of." 

Sam staggered a little and bent down, pulling the puppy out of the crate, holding him to his chest, immediatly bathed in little kisses and a clambor of paws at his shoulder. He looked down at his coat - beautiful blue-flecked and dark brown and gray and white melting into sturdy tan legs and a round pink-tan belly. 

Dean turned him around and pushed him back out of the mule shed. 

"Show everyone what you've gone and done," Dean said, and Sam sobbed a laugh, showing them his dog.  _His_ dog. He kept turning back to Dean, wanting an explanation and Dean just looked at him square in the eye. 

"It's gonna take you a year to train him," he said. "So we'll see what comes after that." 

Sam tried not to cry, but he couldn't help it. He cried, standing there with his dog wriggling in his grip, trying to catch the salt of his tears and whining, nails scratching his arms. Dean pulled him close for a moment. 

"Come on Sammy," he laughed. "I'll help you, it won't be that bad." 

"W-what d-do you even know about c-coonhounds!" Sam said, suddenly pulling back, holding his dog. "You'd ruin him!" he said and Dean twhacked him on the forehead. 

"Well, then just show me what you know!" he laughed, and Sam blinked his weepy eyes, nodding and letting the crowd envelope him, all wanting to see it - that fine coonhound. 

That bona-fide, handsome, hound. 

Dean went to go stand by Cas, nudging at him with his elbow. 

"You think he bought it?" he asked, and Castiel gave him a long blank stare. 

"I doubt it," Cas said, smiling with his eyes. "Everyone knows you're clear as water." 

"You talk tall," Dean said lowly, just for Cas to hear. "But you're full of enough shit to suit a pig." He let his arm go around Cas' back, disguised as resting on the warm hood of the truck. Cas leaned back against it, just so. 

Emma laughed, clapping her hands, pointing to where the cat had come out from under the house and was sunning herself on the porch steps. 

 

 

 


End file.
